Generalized combination rule for evidential reasoning approach and Dempster–Shafer theory of evidence

2021 ◽  
Vol 547 ◽  
pp. 1201-1232
Author(s):  
Yuan-Wei Du ◽  
Jiao-Jiao Zhong
Author(s):  
Rajendra P. Srivastava ◽  
Mari W. Buche ◽  
Tom L. Roberts

The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate the use of the evidential reasoning approach under the Dempster-Shafer (D-S) theory of belief functions to analyze revealed causal maps (RCM). The participants from information technology (IT) organizations provided the concepts to describe the target phenomenon of Job Satisfaction. They also identified the associations between the concepts. This chapter discusses the steps necessary to transform a causal map into an evidential diagram. The evidential diagram can then be analyzed using belief functions technique with survey data, thereby extending the research from a discovery and explanation stage to testing and prediction. An example is provided to demonstrate these steps. This chapter also provides the basics of Dempster-Shafer theory of belief functions and a step-by-step description of the propagation process of beliefs in tree-like evidential diagrams.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan-Wei Du ◽  
Yu-Kun Shan ◽  
Chang-Xing Li ◽  
Rui Wang

In the mass collaboration mode, there exist a large number of product ideas with low value density and thousands of participants who are differed on their professional backgrounds, knowledge structures, and value orientations. It is impossible for each participant to give a comprehensive evaluation of each idea as that in traditional methods for the reasons as mentioned above. In order to solve this problem, a mass collaboration-driven method for recommending product ideas is proposed based on Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence (DST). Firstly, the method for computing basic probability assignment (BPA) function, which can effectively reflect the facticity of experts’ evaluations, is introduced by discounting belief degrees with weights to extract the evaluation information of product ideas. Then, Dempster’s combination rule is used to combine the derived BPA functions for two times: the first one is to combine the discounted BPA functions on all criteria with respect to a specified expert and the other is to combine the combined BPA functions for all experts with respect to a specified alternative. Finally, the steps of mass collaboration-driven method for recommending product ideas based on the DST are proposed. An illustrative example is provided to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method.


Author(s):  
Malcolm J. Beynon

The origins of Dempster-Shafer theory (DST) go back to the work by Dempster (1967) who developed a system of upper and lower probabilities. Following this, his student Shafer (1976), in his book “A Mathematical Theory of Evidence” added to Dempster’s work, including a more thorough explanation of belief functions. In summary, it is a methodology for evidential reasoning, manipulating uncertainty and capable of representing partial knowledge (Haenni & Lehmann, 2002; Kulasekere, Premaratne, Dewasurendra, Shyu, & Bauer, 2004; Scotney & McClean, 2003).


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (13) ◽  
pp. 3727
Author(s):  
Joel Dunham ◽  
Eric Johnson ◽  
Eric Feron ◽  
Brian German

Sensor fusion is a topic central to aerospace engineering and is particularly applicable to unmanned aerial systems (UAS). Evidential Reasoning, also known as Dempster-Shafer theory, is used heavily in sensor fusion for detection classification. High computing requirements typically limit use on small UAS platforms. Valuation networks, the general name given to evidential reasoning networks by Shenoy, provides a means to reduce computing requirements through knowledge structure. However, these networks use conditional probabilities or transition potential matrices to describe the relationships between nodes, which typically require expert information to define and update. This paper proposes and tests a novel method to learn these transition potential matrices based on evidence injected at nodes. Novel refinements to the method are also introduced, demonstrating improvements in capturing the relationships between the node belief distributions. Finally, novel rules are introduced and tested for evidence weighting at nodes during simultaneous evidence injections, correctly balancing the injected evidenced used to learn the transition potential matrices. Together, these methods enable updating a Dempster-Shafer network with significantly less user input, thereby making these networks more useful for scenarios in which sufficient information concerning relationships between nodes is not known a priori.


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