A Tripartite Architecture based on Referee Function for Generic Implementations of Evidence Combination Rules

Abstract: An approach for a generic implementation of combination rules of evidence is proposed. This approach implies a tripartite architecture, with respective parts implementing the logical framework (complete distributive lattice, Boolean algebra), the combination definition (referee function), and the belief-related processes (basic belief assignment, belief and plausibility computation, computations of the combinations according to their definitions). Referee functions are decisional arbitrament conditionally to basic decisions provided by the sources of information. Two generic processes are proposed for computing combination rule defioned by referee functions: a sampling method and a deterministic method based on an adaptive reduction of the set of focal elements. The proposed generic implementation makes possible the construction of several rules simply on the basis of a referee function extension.