A ROBUST CONTINUOUS MODEL FOR EVIDENTIAL REASONING

A 2-D model for evidential reasoning is proposed, in which the belief function of evidence is represented as a belief density function which can be in a continuous or discrete form. A vector form of mutual dependency relationship of the evidence is considered and a dependency propagation theorem is proved. This robust method can resolve the conflicts resulting from either the mutual dependency among evidences or the structural dependency in an inference network due to the evidence combination order. Belief conjunction, belief combination, belief propagation procedures, and AND/OR operations of an inference network based on the proposed 2-D model are all presented, followed by some examples demonstrating the advantages of this method over the conventional methods.