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Towards an Alarm for Opposition Conflict in a Conjunctive Combination of Belief Functions

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Symbolic and Quantitative Approaches to Reasoning with Uncertainty (ECSQARU 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 6717))

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Abstract

In the framework of belief functions, information fusion is based on the construction of a unique belief function resulting from the combination of available belief functions induced from several information sources. When sources are reliable and distinct, Smets’ conjunctive rule, which is equivalent to Dempster’s rule of combination without the normalization process, can be considered. This rule offers interesting properties, but in return the empty set is an absorbing element: a series of conjunctive combinations tends to bring a mass equal to 1 to the empty set, making impossible the distinction between a real problem and an effect due to this absorbing effect of the empty set. Then a formalism allowing the preservation of the conflict which reflects the opposition between sources, is introduced in this paper. Based on the normalization process and on distance measures between belief functions, it is tested and compared with classic conjunctive operators on synthetic belief functions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Univ. Lille Nord of France, UArtois EA, 3926 LGI2A, France

    Éric Lefèvre & David Mercier

  2. Institut Supérieur de Gestion de Tunis, LARODEC, University of Tunis, Tunisie, France

    Zied Elouedi

Authors
  1. Éric Lefèvre
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  2. Zied Elouedi
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  3. David Mercier
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Queen’s University Belfast, BT9 5BN, Belfast, UK

    Weiru Liu

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Lefèvre, É., Elouedi, Z., Mercier, D. (2011). Towards an Alarm for Opposition Conflict in a Conjunctive Combination of Belief Functions. In: Liu, W. (eds) Symbolic and Quantitative Approaches to Reasoning with Uncertainty. ECSQARU 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6717. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22152-1_27

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22152-1_27

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-22151-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-22152-1

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