An Evidence Combination Rule Based on New Weight Assignment Scheme

Conflicting evidence and fuzzy evidence have a significant impact on the results of evidence combination in the application of evidence theory. However, the existing weight assignment methods can hardly reflect the significant influence of fuzzy evidence on the combination results. Therefore, a new method for assigning evidence weights and the corresponding combination rule are proposed. The proposed weight assignment method strengthens the consideration of fuzzy evidence and introduces the Wasserstein distance to compute the clarity degree of evidence which is an important reference index for weight assignment in the proposed combination rule and can weaken the effect of ambiguous evidence effectively. In the experiments, it's firstly verified that the impact of fuzzy evidence on the combination results is significant; therefore it should be fully considered in the weight assignment process. Then, the proposed combination rule with new weight assignment method is tested on a set of numerical arithmetic and Iris datasets. Compared with four existing methods, the results show that the proposed method has higher decision accuracy, F1 score, better computational convergence, and more reliable fusion results as well.

S3UCA: Soft-Margin Support Vector Machine-Based Social Network User Credibility Assessment Method

Among the algorithms used to assess user credibility in social networks, most of them quantify user information and then calculate the user credibility measure by linear summation. The algorithm above, however, ignores the aliasing of user credibility results under the linear summation dimension, resulting in a low evaluation accuracy. To solve this problem, we propose a user credibility evaluation method based on a soft-margin support-vector machine (SVM). This method transforms the user credibility evaluation dimension from a linear summation dimension to a plane coordinate dimension, which reduces the evaluation errors caused by user aliasing in the classification threshold interval. In the quantization of user information, the ladder assignment method is used to process the user text information and numeric information, and the weight assignment method of information entropy is used to calculate the weight assignment among different feature items, which reduces the errors caused by the inconsistency of the order of magnitude among different types of user information. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method in the user’s credibility evaluation results.

Multi-Attribute Decision-Making Approach for a Cost-Effective and Sustainable Energy System Considering Weight Assignment Analysis

The need for inexpensive and sustainable electricity has become an exciting adventure due to the recent rise in the local population and the number of visitors visiting the Banana Islands. Banana Islands is a grid-isolated environment with abundant renewable energy, establishing a hybrid renewable energy-based power system may be a viable solution to the high cost of diesel fuel. This paper describes a dual-flow optimization method for electrifying the Banana Islands, a remote island in Sierra Leone. The study weighs the pros and cons of maintaining the current diesel-based power setup versus introducing a hybrid renewable energy system that takes backup component analysis into account. Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER) software is used in the first optimization to optimally design the various system configurations based on techno-economic and environmental characteristics. A Multi-Attribute Decision-Making (MADM) Model that takes into account in the second optimization, the Combinative Distance-based Assessment System (CODAS) algorithm, and various methods of assigning weights to the attributes is used to rank the best configuration. The results show that the hybrid renewable energy system is a better option for electrifying the Banana Islands than the current stand-alone system. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method of weight assignment was found to be superior to the Entropy method. Biogas generator-assisted hybrid configurations outperformed diesel generator-assisted hybrid configurations. With an optimum design of 101 kW PV, 1 wind turbine, 50 kW biogas, 86 batteries, and a 37.8 kW converter, the PV-wind-biogas-battery system is rated as the best configuration. It has a net present cost (NPC) of $487,247, a cost of energy (COE) of $0.211/kWh, and CO2 emission of 17.5 kg/year. Sensitivity analyses reveal that changes in the rate of inflation and the cost of storage have a significant effect on the overall cost of the configuration.

Calculation Method of Permanent Deformation of Asphalt Mixture Based on Interval Number

There are great uncertainties in road design parameters, and the traditional point numerical calculation results cannot reflect the complexity of the actual project well. Additionally, the calculation method of road design theory based on interval analysis is more difficult in the use of uncertain design parameters. In order to simplify the calculation process of the interval parameters in the road design theory, the asphalt pavement design is taken as the analysis object, and the permanent deformation of the asphalt mixture is simplified by combining the interval analysis theory. Considering the uncertainty of the design parameters, the data with boundaries but uncertain size are expressed in intervals, and then the interval calculation formula for the permanent deformation of the asphalt mixture is derived, and the interval results are obtained. In order to avoid the dependence of interval calculation on the computer code, according to the interval calculation rule, the interval calculation method with the upper and lower end point values as point operations is proposed. In order to overcome the contradiction between interval expansion results and engineering applications, by splitting the multi-interval variable formulas, the interval variable weights are reasonably given, and the synthesis of each single interval result realizes a simplified calculation based on interval variable weight assignment. The analysis results show that the interval calculation method based on the point operation rule is accurate and reliable, and the simplified method based on the interval variable weight assignment is effective and feasible. The simplified interval calculation method proposed in this paper provides a reference for the interval application of road design theory.