Merginator: A belief merging tool for consensus support
Pilar Pozos-Parra, Oscar Chávez-Bosquez, Kevin McAreavey · Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems · 2018
Belief merging aims to combine pieces of information from different (and possibly conflicting) sources so as to produce a single consistent belief base which retains as much information as possible. In this paper, we describe Merginator, a logic-based tool implementing three belief merging operators presented with specific characteristics that make them interesting for comparison: Δ Σ , Δ GMax and Δ ps . We describe these operators while solving a set of basic examples found in the literature that we translate into natural language to provide insights for Merginator users. We also propose two more complex consensus-seeking examples: an adaptation to the role play “Lost at Sea” and the subject of administrative response to air pollution in Hong Kong. Results show that all three operators provide a consensus to the scenarios, and Δ ps gives the most refined consensus. This demonstrates that belief merging, is a viable technique to support consensus decision-making in many domains. Merginator is open source software available at GitHub.