Requirements for total uncertainty measures in Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence

Recently, an alternative measure of total uncertainty in Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence (DST) has been proposed in place of the maximum entropy measure. It is based on the pignistic probability of a basic probability assignment and it is proved that this measure verifies a set of needed properties for such a type of measure. The proposed measure is motivated by the problems that maximum (upper) entropy has. In this paper, we analyse the requirements, presented in the literature, for total uncertainty measures in DST and the shortcomings found on them. We extend the set of requirements, which we consider as a set of requirements of properties, and we use the set of shortcomings found on them to define a set of requirements of the behaviour for total uncertainty measures in DST. We present the differences of the principal total uncertainty measures presented in DST taking into account their properties and behaviour. Also, an experimental comparative study of the performance of total uncertainty measures in DST on a special type of belief decision trees is presented.