A new fusion strategy of defect level assessment system

The level fusion component of a pipeline defect assessment system is introduced. It is invalid when dealing with conflicted level probabilities. Several fusion methods are analyzed briefly and a new approach is proposed. It can dispose conflicted level probabilities efficiently and get reasonable results by weighted averaging the probabilities before combining them with D-S combination rule. The weights are calculated based on the reliabilities of the assessment models and judge matrixes. The efficiency of the new approach is validated by combining several groups of conflicted level probabilities obtained from an experimental system.