How to preserve the conflict as an alarm in the combination of belief functions?

摘要

In the belief function framework, a unique function is induced from the use of a combination rule so allowing to synthesize all the knowledge of the initial belief functions. When information sources are reliable and independent, the conjunctive rule of combination, proposed by Smets, may be used. This rule is equivalent to the Dempster rule without the normalization process. The conjunctive combination provides interesting properties, as the commutativity and the associativity. However, it is characterized by having the empty set, called also the conflict, as an absorbing element. So, when we apply a significant number of conjunctive combinations, the mass assigned to the conflict tends to 1 which makes impossible returning the distinction between the problem arisen during the fusion and the effect due to the absorption power of the empty set.