Evidential reasoning rule for interval-valued belief structures combination

Dempster-Shafer theory (DST) of evidence has wide application prospect in the fields of information aggregation and decision analysis. To solve the issues of interval evidence combination and normalization, we have reinvestigated the methods provided for interval evidence combination within the frameworks of DST and evidential reasoning (ER) approach, respectively, and pointed out the shortcomings of existing methods. A more general interval evidence combination approach based on the ER rule is constructed. Numerical examples are provided to indicate that the proposed method not only suitable to the conflict-free interval evidence combination, but also to the conflicting interval evidence combination, and interval evidence specificity can be kept intact in the interval evidence combination process. Moreover, the interval evidence combination methods based on DST or ER are special cases of the proposed method in some cases.