Toward a combination rule to deal with partial conflict and specificity in belief functions theory

Abstract

We present and discuss a mixed conjunctive and disjunctive rule, a generalization of conflict repartition rules, and a combination of these two rules. In the belief functions theory one of the major problem is the conflict repartition enlightened by the famous Zadeh's example. To date, many combination rules have been proposed in order to solve a solution to this problem. Moreover, it can be important to consider the specificity of the responses of the experts. Since few year some unification rules are proposed. We have shown in our previous works the interest of the proportional conflict redistribution rule. We propose here a mixed combination rule following the proportional conflict redistribution rule modified by a discounting procedure. This rule generalizes many combination rules.