A new measure of conflict and hybrid combination rules in the evidence theory

Abstract

Based on the critical analysis of methods for evaluation of conflict between basic probability assignments (bpas) to be combined and combination rules in the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence, a new simple, but reliable method for the evaluation of conflict between combining bpas is proposed and analysed. Using some critical examples, it is shown that the proposed approach performs better than Dempster's rule and the known hybrid rule based on the weighted sum of conjunction and disjunction operators. It is shown that in the case of small conflict, the use of averaging rule for combination of bpas seems to be a best choice. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.