An improved evidence combination approach based on credibility of evidence

In this paper, an improved evidence combination method is proposed to address the paradox problem of Dempster-Shafer theory when dealing with highly conflict evidences. Considering that the counter-intuitive combination result of Dempster's theory is related to both the unreliable evidence and the unreasonable distribution of the conflict evidences, the method combines the evidence preprocessing and conflict reassignment closely. The credibility of each evidence is firstly obtained based on Jousselme's distance. And then the original evidences are preprocessed by using the credibility degree as the discounting factor. The preprocessed evidences are lastly combined by the modified combination rule which distributes the conflict to each combining proposition, also taking the credibility of each evidence into account. The numerical examples demonstrate that the modified method can solve the paradox problem dealing with evidence conflict and has high convergent speed.