Transferring mass in a structure of frame refinements

This working paper describes a method for transferring mass. The method is part of a model that uses belief-function theory in an auditing context, or more generally in the field of validation. The model is an interpretation of Dempster-Shafer theory and is aimed at representing different items of evidence known with uncertainty, and at integrating them into global opinions on validity issues. For this purpose, we use frames of hypotheses that can be repeatedly split into finer hypotheses, leading to a structure of frames. A piece of evidence can then be represented in the frame that contains all details necessary to discern the evidence. For this type of structure, we developed a method to transfer mass between frames. Such a transfer is necessary because Dempster's rule can only combine mass committed to subsets of the same frame. The discussion of this method of mass transfer is the subject of this paper. Results can be useful for other similar frame structures.