DS combination method based on the fusion of evidences pretreatment and rules modification

To suppress the counterintuitive and invalid conclusions produced by the D-S theory of evidence with highly conflicting evidence, a modified evidence approach based on the improvement of both evidence sources and combination rules is proposed. Such a method comprehensively utilizes the advantages of DS theory and additive strategy. First, reliability measurements are applied to generate the weights of evidence sources based on the Pearson correlation coefficient. After that, the conflicting coefficient is apportioned to focal elements based on the weights, which gives reasonable corrections for the fused results. Finally, the improved evidence sources are fused by the modified combination rules, which fully utilize the conflicting information. Examples provided demonstrate the efficiency and rationality of the proposed approach.