Toward a combination rule to deal with partial conflict and specificity in belief functions theory

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new mixed combination rule for belief functions that addresses conflict resolution and specificity, generalizing existing rules by combining conjunctive and disjunctive approaches with a proportional conflict redistribution method.

Contribution

It proposes a novel mixed combination rule that unifies and extends previous conflict resolution methods in belief functions theory, incorporating a discounting procedure.

Findings

The new rule effectively manages partial conflicts and specificity.

It generalizes many existing combination rules.

The rule improves conflict redistribution in belief functions.

Abstract

We present and discuss a mixed conjunctive and disjunctive rule, a generalization of conflict repartition rules, and a combination of these two rules. In the belief functions theory one of the major problem is the conflict repartition enlightened by the famous Zadeh's example. To date, many combination rules have been proposed in order to solve a solution to this problem. Moreover, it can be important to consider the specificity of the responses of the experts. Since few year some unification rules are proposed. We have shown in our previous works the interest of the proportional conflict redistribution rule. We propose here a mixed combination rule following the proportional conflict redistribution rule modified by a discounting procedure. This rule generalizes many combination rules.