On the fusion of non-independent belief structures

We briefly review some aspects of the Dempster–Shafer theory of evidence. We suggest an approach to the aggregation of non-independent belief structures. This approach makes use of a weighted aggregation of the belief structures where the weights are related to the degree of dependence. It is shown that this aggregation is non-commutative, the fused value depends on the sequencing of the evidences. We then consider the problem of how best to sequence the evidence. We investigate using the measure of information content of the fused value as a method for selecting the appropriate way to sequence the belief structures.