Combining Belief Functions Issued from Dependent Sources

Abstract

Dempster’s rule for combining two belief functions assumes the independence of the sources of information. If this assumption is questionable, I suggest to use the least specific combination minimizing the conflict among the ones allowed by a simple generalization of Dempster’s rule. This increases the monotonicity of the reasoning and helps us to manage situations of dependence. Some properties of this combination rule and its usefulness in a generalization of Bayes’ theorem are then considered.