Work

Essential Conflict Measurement in Dempster–Shafer Theory for Intelligent Information Fusion

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Dempster’s combination rule in Dempster–Shafer theory is a powerful and effective tool for multi-sensor data fusion. However, counterintuitive results are possible under the condition of a high conflict between pieces of evidence. This study demonstrates that existing conflict measurements cannot prevent such results and, thus, proposes a quantitative conflict measurement based on the concept of essential conflict. This work analyzes two characteristics of the essential conflict, namely belief absolutization and uncorrectable assertions. In addition, considering the desirable properties of the measurement, this study demonstrates that the measurement of essential conflict can reveal the essence of counterintuitive results in Dempster’s combination process. Finally, properties and examples are used to validate the proposed measurement.

Source: Mathematics

DOI: 10.3390/math14010097

Authors: Wenjun Ma, Meishen He, Siyuan Wang, Jieyu Zhan

Institution: South China Normal University

Language: English

Topic: Multi-Criteria Decision Making

Subfield: Management Science and Operations Research

Field: Decision Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $3,137

Funder: National Natural Science Foundation of China