Improvement of the combination rules of the D-S Evidence Theory based on dealing with the evidence conflict

This paper introduces improved combination rules for the D-S Evidence Theory for resolving the problem of evidence conflicts and also provides the mathematical proofs for these rules. The improved rules allocate the conflicts to various focal elements according to the credibility of the coherence evidence. We adopt the AND-algorithm to combine the coherence evidence, which reflects the intersection of focus elements. Our theoretical analysis and numerical examples prove that the given rules are rational and effective for both highly conflicting and coherent evidence.