Research On Issues Of Scientific Foundation Project Selection Based On D-S Evidence Theory

As the main support channel to basic research, scientific foundation has played an important role in the national innovation system. Scientific Foundation Project Selection (SFPS) concerns whether government's investment in science and technology can be effectively utilized and outstanding scientists can obtain limited supports by healthy competition. At present, studies on SFPS mainly use the traditional projects evaluation methods, and there is little study based on the characteristics of SFPS or regarded the specific issues in the evaluation process. As a result, it is very important both for theory and practice that the specific issues of SFPS are chosen as the research object.SFPS is strictly pursuant to peer experts'opinions, so the selection of peer experts and disposal of comments from peer experts would be the key points. In the process of selecting peer experts, all relative factors are not only complex, but also provided with the characters of uncertainty. On the other hand, Science foundation projects are of strongly explorative, even if the peer experts are also likely to face the proposal beyond their awareness, so peer experts'reviews are usually given in the form of linguistic assessment information. Therefore, SFPS belongs to a decision-making issue with complexity and uncertainty in a particular environment. The author applys D-S Evidence Theory, Grey Theory, Subjective Evidential Reasoning and Linguistic Assessment Approach to complete a theoretical exploration on SFPS. The main content and innovative research results are as follows:1. The new ideas of conflict analysis and choosing evidence combination according to conflict analysis result are suggested based on the comparative discussion of relative studies at home and abroad. Via conflict analysis by Jousselme distance, evidences with less conflict would form virtual leagues, and then DS rule and ER rule are appled to combine the evidences in the same league and the evdences of different leagues respectively. To measure the reliability of evidence, the support degrees of each evidence by whole evidence system are calculated, and then objective weights of virtual leagues would be available. In such way, our combination rule would solve the problem of combining evidences with strong conflict, achieve convergence and reduce the risk in the decision-making. By a classic example, the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed combination rule is finally tested and verified. Forementioned approach is important theoretical basis to construct models for the selection of peer experts and disposal of comments.2. Considering the complicated and uncertain factors in peer expert selection, a multi-level model with selection criteria is constructed based on D-S Evidence Theory. By the way of analyzing domestic and overseas related literature and investigating practically, the author suggests an expert selection indicator system which contains three aspects: review ability, science credibility and review performance. The analysis and evaluation approach to each indicator is also expatiated. The author designs 2 quantitative criteria as damping constant based cumulative hit rate and cumulativedeviation rate, proposes central point triangle whiten function which makes quantitative criteria could be combined by D-S Evidence Theory directly.3. On the basis of analysing existed methods of linguistic assessment information and actual needs of SFPS, the author proposes a new concept of 2-dimension linguistic assessment information (2-DLAI) and corresponding decision-making issues, and expresses 2-DLAI by the frame of subjective evidential reasoning. Aiming at identifying and handling controversial projects in SFPS, a consensus analysis approach for experts'comments based on 2-DLAI is suggested. To measure disagreement degree reasonablly, the author designs a 2-DLAI distance formula, and prooves relevant properties. According to the similarity relations of experts'comments, the hierarchical structure relations of experts'comments are analyzed which facilitates to find out causes of disagreements and seek valuable ones from controversial projects. The experts'comments aggregation approaches are proposed under 3 different situations: non-weighted, real number weighted and 2-DLAI weighted respectively, two ordering rules based on comments aggregation results are also suggested.4. To verify the practicality and efficiency of the proposed methods, the author carries out empirical research on selecting peer experts and disposing comments from peer experts in the background of NSFC's general projects. The expert selection model based on D-S Evidence Theory and the comments disposal method based on 2-DLAI all pass demonstration test with practical data. A comparative study shows that 2-DLAI method is more accurate than present method and 2-tuple linguistic method in the process of comments disposal, also illustrates the realistic significance of familiarity degree imformation from peer experts.