A Study on Evidentiality in the Abstract Part of Learners’English Academic Papers

Evidentiality indicates the source of information and the speaker’s attitude towards the reliability of information.This paper analyzed evidentiality in 30 abstracts of English academic papers written by second-year science and engineering students and revealed that reporting evidentials and inferring evidentials have been used in the abstracts,while sensory evidentials and belief evidentials have not been used.The enlightenment from the analysis is that teachers can introduce to students the functions of different types of evidentials and the varied ways of expressions and help students raise the awareness of using evidentials consciously and properly to enhance their academic abstract writing.

Data-Driven Model for Risk Assessment of Cable Fire in Utility Tunnels Using Evidential Reasoning Approach

Cable fire is one of the most important events for operation and maintenance(O&M)safety in underground utility tunnels(UUTs).Since there are limited studies about cable fire risk assessment,a comprehensive assessment model is proposed to evaluate the cable fire risk in different UUT sections and improve O&M efficiency.Considering the uncertainties in the risk assessment,an evidential reasoning(ER)approach is used to combine quantitative sensor data and qualitative expert judgments.Meanwhile,a data transformation technique is contributed to transform continuous data into a five-grade distributed assessment.Then,a case study demonstrates how the model and the ER approach are established.The results show that in Shenzhen,China,the cable fire risk in District 8,B Road is the lowest,while more resources should be paid in District 3,C Road and District 25,C Road,which are selected as comparative roads.Based on the model,a data-driven O&M process is proposed to improve the O&M effectiveness,compared with traditional methods.This study contributes an effective ER-based cable fire evaluation model to improve the O&M efficiency of cable fire in UUTs.

Review on the Development of Evidentiality and Analysis of Non-Grammatical Evidential Systems

Evidentiality is the linguistic representation encoding the source of the said proposition and indicating its credibility,and also embodies the speaker’s assessment of information sources and the involvement in the said proposition.In the field of typology as rationale,the present study introduces the development of evidentiality in five stages,explores the definitions of evidentiality in the broad and narrow senses as well as grammatical and lexical evidential markers,and then illustrates non-grammatical evidential systems with English and Chinese examples,which provides a perspective for future empirical discourse studies in languages with only lexical evidential markers.

Evidentiality in a Commencement Address—by J. K. Rowling in Harvard University

Evidentiality talks about the source of information and the speaker’s commitment to the statement.This paper aims at analyzing the visual,hearsay and inferential evidential markers in the Harvard University commencement address given by J.K.Rowing,and thus explore the interpersonal and evaluative functions of evidentiality based on the speech.If we say that a speech is an interaction between the speaker and the listener,the evidentiality just makes the interaction more fluent,by gaining the credibility from the listeners and influencing them.

Evidential method to identify influential nodes in complex networks

Identifying influential nodes in complex networks is still an open issue. In this paper, a new comprehensive centrality mea- sure is proposed based on the Dempster-Shafer evidence theory. The existing measures of degree centrality, betweenness centra- lity and closeness centrality are taken into consideration in the proposed method. Numerical examples are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Land Cover Classification with Multi-source Data Using Evidential Reasoning Approach

Land cover classification is the core of converting satellite imagery to available geographic data.However,spectral signatures do not always provide enough information in classification decisions.Thus,the application of multi-source data becomes necessary.This paper presents an evidential reasoning (ER) approach to incorporate Landsat TM imagery,altitude and slope data.Results show that multi-source data contribute to the classification accuracy achieved by the ER method,whereas play a negative role to that derived by maximum likelihood classifier (MLC).In comparison to the results derived based on TM imagery alone,the overall accuracy rate of the ER method increases by 7.66% and that of the MLC method decreases by 8.35% when all data sources (TM plus altitude and slope) are accessible.The ER method is regarded as a better approach for multi-source image classification.In addition,the method produces not only an accurate classification result,but also the uncertainty which presents the inherent difficulty in classification decisions.The uncertainty associated to the ER classification image is evaluated and proved to be useful for improved classification accuracy.

A variable weight approach for evidential reasoning

A variable weight approach was proposed to handle the probability deficiency problem in the evidential reasoning （ER） approach. The probability deficiency problem indicated that the inadequate information in the assessment result should be less than that in the input. However, it was proved that under certain circumstances, the ER approach could not solve the probability deficiency problem. The variable weight approach was based on two assumptions： 1） the greater weight should be given to the rule with more adequate information; 2） the greater weight should be given to the rules with less disparate information. Assessment results of two notional case studies show that 1） the probability deficiency problem is solved using the proposed variable weight approach, and 2） the information with less inadequacy and more disparity is provided for the decision makers to help reach a consensus.

Fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making approach with incomplete information based on evidential reasoning

The weights of criteria are incompletely known and the criteria values are incomplete and uncertain or even default in some fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making problems.For those problems,an approach based on evidential reasoning is proposed,in which the criteria values are integrated on the basis of analytical algorithm of evidential reasoning,and then nonlinear programming models of each alternative are developed with the incomplete information on weights.The genetic algorithm is employed to solve the models,producing the weights and the utility interval of each alternative,and the ranking of the whole set of alternatives can be attained.Finally,an example shows the effectiveness of the method.

Reliability Analysis for Complex Systems Based on Dynamic Evidential Network Considering Epistemic Uncertainty

Fault tolerant technology has greatly improved the reliability of modern systems on one hand and makes their failure mechanisms more complex on the other.The characteristics of dynamics of failure,diversity of distribution and epistemic uncertainty always exist in these systems,which increase the challenges in the reliability assessment of these systems significantly.This paper presents a novel reliability analysis framework for complex systems within which the failure rates of components are expressed in interval numbers.Specifically,it uses a dynamic fault tree(DFT)to model the dynamic fault behaviors and copes with the epistemic uncertainty using Dempster-Shafer(D-S)theory and interval numbers.Furthermore,an approach is presented to convert a DFT into a dynamic evidential network(DEN)to calculate the reliability parameters.Additionally,a sorting method based on the possibility degree is proposed to rank the importance of components represented by interval numbers in order to obtain the most critical components,which can be used to provide the guidance for system design,maintenance planning and fault diagnosis.Finally,a numerical example is provided to illustrate the availability and efficiency of the proposed method.

Integration-centric approach to system readiness assessment based on evidential reasoning

An integration-centric approach is proposed to handle inadequate information in the system readiness level （SRL） assessment using the evidential reasoning （ER） algorithm. Current SRL assessment approaches cannot be applied to handle inadequate information as the input. The ER-based approach is proposed to synthesize inadequate input information and an integration-centric perspective is applied to reduce the computational complexity. Two case studies are performed to validate the efficiency of the proposed approach. And these studies are also performed to study how the inadequate information will affect the assessment result. And the differences caused by the system＇s structure. The importance of the system＇s structure in the SRL assessment is demonstrated and the contributions made in this study are summarized as conclusions.

Review on Research of Evidentiality

This paper tries to comprehensively introduce different researches of evidentiality, and make some corresponding comments on these researches in terms of research features, methods or limitations and so on. In addition, after the review, conclusion and some questions will be put forward and further research will be recommended.

Evidential Reasoning in Air Battle Systems

Bayesian statistics assigns basic probabilities to singletons （single element sets）. The Dempster-Shafer evidence theory generalizes Bayesian statistics by assigning basic probabilities to subsets to represent evidence and to develop evidential reasoning. This paper discusses what is the strength of evidence theory. As an application of evidence theory, evidential reasoning in air battle systems is discussed. In the air battle system, evidential reasoning is applied to fuse the muitisensor iaformation and identify the type of aircraft. The effectiveness of this fusion approach is evaluated by simulated data.

Tenses, aspects, and categories of evidentiality and egocentricity in spoken Lhasa Tibetan

This paper mainly discusses verbal aspects and their syntactic markers in Lhasa Tibetan. Since aspects in Tibetan always share markers with other important categories called evidentiality and egocentricity, the former of which assesses the evidence of speaker's statement and the latter denotes behavioral characteristics of a speaker'sego-centricity, this paper simultaneously describes all three types: aspect, evidentiality and egocentricity. There are nine types of verb aspects in Lhasa Tibetan, namely: Prospective, Imminent, Premediated, Realis, Durative, Resultative, Merely-past, Perfect, and Contextual aspects. There are four types of evidentialities, namely, Self-knowledge, Knowing-by-sight, Knowing-by-newly-found-information and Knowing-by-inference evidentialities. Categories of egocentricity demonstrate whether an action is towards the Self or the Other, whether the speaker gains or loses, and so on. Additionally, this essay also discusses the interactive relationship between syntactical verb aspects and personal pronouns, intentionality, modality, as well as temporal-spatial cognition.

Handling epistemic uncertainties in PRA using evidential networks

In order to overcome the limitations of traditional methods in uncertainty analysis, a modified Bayesian network(BN), which is called evidence network(EN), was proposed with evidence theory to handle epistemic uncertainty in probabilistic risk assessment(PRA). Fault trees(FTs) and event trees(ETs) were transformed into an EN which is used as a uniform framework to represent accident scenarios. Epistemic uncertainties of basic events in PRA were presented in evidence theory form and propagated through the network. A case study of a highway tunnel risk analysis was discussed to demonstrate the proposed approach. Frequencies of end states are obtained and expressed by belief and plausibility measures. The proposed approach addresses the uncertainties in experts' knowledge and can be easily applied to uncertainty analysis of FTs/ETs that have dependent events.

A GMDA clustering algorithm based on evidential reasoning architecture

The traditional clustering algorithm is difficult to deal with the identification and division of uncertain objects distributed in the overlapping region,and aimed at solving this problem,the Evidential Clustering based on General Mixture Decomposition Algorithm(GMDA-EC)is proposed.First,the belief classification of target cluster is carried out,and the sample category of target distribution overlapping region is extended.Then,on the basis of General Mixture Decomposition Algorithm(GMDA)clustering,the fusion model of evidence credibility and evidence relative entropy is constructed to generate the basic probability assignment of the target and achieve the belief division of the target.Finally,the performance of the algorithm is verified by the synthetic dataset and the measured dataset.The experimental results show that the algorithm can reflect the uncertainty of target clustering results more comprehensively than the traditional probabilistic partition clustering algorithm.

On the evidential reasoning rule for dependent evidence combination

Evidential Reasoning(ER)rule,which can combine multiple pieces of independent evidence conjunctively,is widely applied in multiple attribute decision analysis.However,the assumption of independence among evidence is often not satisfied,resulting in ER rule inapplicable.In this paper,an Evidential Reasoning rule for Dependent Evidence combination(ERr-DE)is developed.Firstly,the aggregation sequence of multiple pieces of evidence is determined according to evidence reliability.On this basis,a calculation method of evidence Relative Total Dependence Coefficient(RTDC)is proposed using the distance correlation method.Secondly,as a discounting factor,RTDC is introduced into the ER rule framework,and the ERr-DE model is formulated.The aggregation process of two pieces of dependent evidence by ERr-DE is investigated,which is then generalized to aggregate multiple pieces of non-independent evidence.Thirdly,sensitivity analysis is carried out to investigate the relationship between the model output and the RTDC.The properties of sensitivity coefficient are explored and mathematically proofed.The conjunctive probabilistic reasoning process of ERr-DE and the properties of sensitivity coefficient are verified by two numerical examples respectively.Finally,the practical application of the ERr-DE is validated by a case study on the performance assessment of satellite turntable system.

Performance evaluation of complex systems using evidential reasoning approach with uncertain parameters

The composition of the modern aerospace system becomes more and more complex.The performance degradation of any device in the system may cause it difficult for the whole system to keep normal working states.Therefore,it is essential to evaluate the performance of complex aerospace systems.In this paper,the performance evaluation of complex aerospace systems is regarded as a Multi-Attribute Decision Analysis(MADA)problem.Based on the structure and working principle of the system,a new Evidential Reasoning(ER)based approach with uncertain parameters is proposed to construct a nonlinear optimization model to evaluate the system performance.In the model,the interval form is used to express the uncertainty,such as error in testing data and inaccuracy in expert knowledge.In order to analyze the subsystems that have a great impact on the performance of the system,the sensitivity analysis of the evaluation result is carried out,and the corresponding maintenance strategy is proposed.For a type of Inertial Measurement Unit(IMU)used in a rocket,the proposed method is employed to evaluate its performance.Then,the parameter sensitivity of the evaluation result is analyzed,and the main factors affecting the performance of IMU are obtained.Finally,the comparative study shows the effectiveness of the proposed method.

A Multi-dimensional Trust-aware Cloud Service Selection Mechanism Based on Evidential Reasoning Approach

In the last few years, cloud computing as a new computing paradigm has gone through significant development, but it is also facing many problems. One of them is the cloud service selection problem. As increasingly boosting cloud services are offered through the internet and some of them may be not reliable or even malicious, how to select trustworthy cloud services for cloud users is a big challenge. In this paper, we propose a multi-dimensional trust-aware cloud service selection mechanism based on evidential reasoning(ER) approach that integrates both perception-based trust value and reputation based trust value, which are derived from direct and indirect trust evidence respectively, to identify trustworthy services. Here, multi-dimensional trust evidence, which reflects the trustworthiness of cloud services from different aspects, is elicited in the form of historical users feedback ratings. Then, the ER approach is applied to aggregate the multi-dimensional trust ratings to obtain the real-time trust value and select the most trustworthy cloud service of certain type for the active users. Finally, the fresh feedback from the active users will update the trust evidence for other service users in the future.

General Algorithms for Barnett's Structure in Evidential Reasoning

A major problem encountered when applications of the Dempster-Shafer ev-idence handling methods are contemplated is the computational complekity of the basic operations. Barnett has proposed a linear-time computational tech-nique for use in evidential reasoning. However, it is restricted to the entire orthogonal sum of dichotomous evidential functions. This means that there has to be a piece of evidence for each contender for the choice being made. This paper presents more general algorithms for combining dichotomous evidelitial functions. The idea is based on the fact that dichotomous evidential functions generalize simple evidential functions, and a useful general formula for com-bining simple evidential functions is available. It is therefore natural to seek general formulae or algorithms for combining dichotomous evidential functions.

A New Model for Network Security Situation Assessment of the Industrial Internet

To address the problem of network security situation assessment in the Industrial Internet,this paper adopts the evidential reasoning(ER)algorithm and belief rule base(BRB)method to establish an assessment model.First,this paper analyzes the influencing factors of the Industrial Internet and selects evaluation indicators that contain not only quantitative data but also qualitative knowledge.Second,the evaluation indicators are fused with expert knowledge and the ER algorithm.According to the fusion results,a network security situation assessment model of the Industrial Internet based on the ER and BRB method is established,and the projection covariance matrix adaptive evolution strategy(P-CMA-ES)is used to optimize the model parameters.This method can not only utilize semiquantitative information effectively but also use more uncertain information and prevent the problem of combinatorial explosion.Moreover,it solves the problem of the uncertainty of expert knowledge and overcomes the problem of low modeling accuracy caused by insufficient data.Finally,a network security situation assessment case of the Industrial Internet is analyzed to verify the effectiveness and superiority of the method.The research results showthat this method has strong applicability to the network security situation assessment of complex Industrial Internet systems.It can accurately reflect the actual network security situation of Industrial Internet systems and provide safe and reliable suggestions for network administrators to take timely countermeasures,thereby improving the risk monitoring and emergency response capabilities of the Industrial Internet.