Combination in dempster-shafer theory based on a disagreement factor between evidences

Abstract

There exist many rules to combine the available pieces of information in Dempster-Shafer theory of Evidence (DST). The first one of them was the Dempster’s rule of combination (DRC), which has some known drawbacks. In the literature, many rules have tried to solve the problems founds on DRC but normally they have other non-desirable behaviors too. In this paper, it is proposed a set of mathematical properties that a rule of that type should verify; it is analyzed some of the most used alternatives to the DRC including some of the last hybrid rules, via their properties and behaviors; and it is presented a new hybrid rule that satisfies an important set of properties and does not suffer from the counterintuitive behaviors of other rules.