ODE-BPA: A Novel Basic Probability Assignment Generation Method Based on OTSU and Deng Entropy

Constructing basic probability assignments (BPAs) objectively and adaptively remains an important issue in Dempster–Shafer theory. To reduce the uncertainty caused by rigid nested focal element structures, this paper proposes ODE-BPA, a BPA generation method based on OTSU and Deng entropy. In ODE-BPA, hypothesis support values are normalized and sorted into an ordered sequence. OTSU is then used to construct two non-overlapping focal elements, while Deng entropy regulates the confidence degree for mass allocation. Experiments are conducted on twenty-five benchmark datasets, including mapping-structure comparison, ablation analysis, comparisons with existing BPA generation methods and classical machine learning classifiers, as well as the robustness evaluation under noisy and conflicting evidence. Rigorous statistical analysis demonstrates that ODE-BPA achieves competitive accuracy and ranking among existing BPA generation methods; exhibits performance comparable to that of SVM, naive Bayes, and decision tree under standard settings; and alleviates the influence of local noise and conflicting evidence in certain cases.