An Improved Dempster–Shafer Evidence Theory Based on the Chebyshev Distance and Its Application in Rock Burst Prewarnings

Abstract

The prewarning and responses of different monitoring indices are out of sync in engineering disaster warning, and the disaster risk assessment is inaccurate based on individual response index or comparison with different indices. The traditional Dempster–Shafer (DS) evidence theory cannot readily integrate the conflicting multivariate monitoring data. In the present study, the DS evidence theory was improved by integrating various conflicting multivariate monitoring data, and the application condition, advantages, and disadvantages of those modified methods based on the DS evidence theory were investigated. An improved DS evidence theory method was proposed based on the Chebyshev distance and the zero-divisor modified evidence source method. The results indicated that the improved DS evidence theory based on the Chebyshev distance performs well in both integrating the conflicting and nonconflicting monitoring data and is superior to other improved methods in suppressing interfering evidence with good stability. The proposed improved DS evidence theory based on the Chebyshev distance is then applied to rock burst prewarning, and the prewarning model is established based on multiphysics in situ monitoring data. The probability with various risk levels is employed to assess the safety state, which can reflect the degree of rock burst. The risk of rock burst can be quantitatively predicted using this proposed method, which can provide some guidance in the prewarning of engineering disasters.