An introduction to DSmT

TL;DR

This paper introduces Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT), a novel framework for managing conflicting, uncertain, and imprecise information sources in modern information systems, emphasizing its foundational rules and general applicability.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive survey of DSmT's foundations and combination rules, highlighting its novelty in handling paradoxical and high-conflict information sources.

Findings

Demonstrates the efficiency of DSmT through simple examples

Shows the generality of DSmT in various uncertain information scenarios

Highlights the theoretical foundations and key rules of DSmT

Abstract

The management and combination of uncertain, imprecise, fuzzy and even paradoxical or high conflicting sources of information has always been, and still remains today, of primal importance for the development of reliable modern information systems involving artificial reasoning. In this introduction, we present a survey of our recent theory of plausible and paradoxical reasoning, known as Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT), developed for dealing with imprecise, uncertain and conflicting sources of information. We focus our presentation on the foundations of DSmT and on its most important rules of combination, rather than on browsing specific applications of DSmT available in literature. Several simple examples are given throughout this presentation to show the efficiency and the generality of this new approach.