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Jean Dezert

 

JeanDezert.jpg

Last update: February 26th, 2024.

 

News (Nov. 28, 2023): The new volume 5 of the DSmT book series is now available here.

 

Forthcoming events on information fusion, tracking and belief functions

  • Fusion 2024 Int. Conference, Venezia, Italy, July 2024. Submission dedline: March 1st, 2024.
  • Belief 2024 Int. Conference, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK, Sept. 4th-6th, 2024. Submission Deadline April 15, 2024.

Past events on information fusion, tracking and belief functions

International Society of Information Fusion

 

Contact and Information

  • Dr. Jean Dezert
  • Citizenship : French
  • Senior Research Scientist at DTIS
  • Office National d’Etudes et de Recherches Aérospatiales, Chemin de la Hunière, 91761 Palaiseau Cedex, France
  • Tél : +33 1 80 38 65 64

 

Some research impact factors (source: scholar.google.fr)

  • Citations number (2020-04-06) : 6045 (all) | 3200 (since 2015)

This is the number of citations to all publications. The second column has the "recent" version of this metric which is the number of new citations in the last 5 years to all publications.

  • Hirsch index (or h-index) (2020-04-06) : h = 39 | 30

h-index is the largest number h such that h publications have at least h citations. The second column has the "recent" version of this metric which is the largest number h such that h publications have at least h new citations in the last 5 years.

  • i10-index (2020-04-06) : i10 = 115 | 67

i10-index is the number of publications with at least 10 citations. The second column has the "recent" version of this metric which is the number of publications that have received at least 10 new citations in the last 5 years.

  • Egghe's index  : g = 29

This index is usually used to measure the scientific productivity. Given a set of articles ranked in decreasing order of the number of citations that they received, the g-index is the (unique) largest number such that the top g articles received (together) at least g2 citations.

  • Erdös number : 3

The Erdős number describes the "collaborative distance" between a person and mathematician Paul Erdős, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers.

 

Short biography

  • Jean Dezert was born in l'Hay les Roses, France, on August 1962. He received the EE degree in 1985, and his Ph. D. from the University Paris XI, Orsay, in 1990 in Automatic Control and Signal Processing. During 1986-1990 he was with the Syst. Dept. at the French Aerospace Lab (ONERA) and did research in multisensor multitarget tracking (MS-MTT). During 1991-1992 as an ESA Postdoctoral Research Fellow, he visited the Dept. of ESE, UConn, Storrs, USA under supervision of Professor Yaakov Bar-Shalom and worked on tracking and autonomous navigation systems. During 1992-1993 he was teaching assistant in EE Dept, University of Orléans, France. Since 1993, he is senior research scientist (Maître de Recherches) in the Information Processing and Systems Dept. (DTIS) at the French Aerospace Lab. His current research interests include estimation theory, and information fusion (IF) and plausible reasoning with applications to MS-MTT, defense and security, robotics, remote sensing, multi-criteria decision-making, classification and risk assessment. Jean Dezert has been involved within International Society of Information Fusion (ISIF) since its beginning and has been the Local Arrangements Co-Organizer of the first Fusion Conference in Europe in 2000. He has served as vice-president of ISIF in 2004 and ISIF President in 2016, and has been involved in the Technical Program Committees of Fusion 2001-2019 Conf., and in several sessions and panel discussions on reasoning under uncertainty and data fusion. Jean Dezert has co-edited six books and more than 200 papers in conferences and journals on tracking and information fusion. He has given seminars and workshops in the IF and tracking in USA, Europe, Australia and China and he is reviewer for several international journals, and Associate Editor of ISIF Journal of Advances in Information Fusion. Jean Dezert is the co-founder with Professor Smarandache of DSmT (Dezert-Smarandache Theory) of information fusion based on belief functions.

 

My main research interests

  • Information fusion and reasoning
  • Multisensor-multitarget tracking, estimation theory and filtering
  • Autonomous navigation systems
  • Data Clustering and Classification
  • Data and image fusion, remote sensing
  • Satellite image processing, teledetection, threat assessment and situation analysis
  • Plausible and paradoxical reasoning for fusion of imprecise, uncertain and highly conflicting quantitative and qualitative sources of information.
  • Artificial intelligence and non Bayesian reasoning
  • Multi Criteria Decision Making support
  • Belief functions,  Dempster-Shafer theory (DST) and Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT)

DSmT in short

Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT) of plausible and paradoxical reasoning is a natural extension of the classical Dempster-Shafer Theory (DST) but includes fundamental differences with the DST. DSmT allows to formally combine any types of independent sources of information represented in term of belief functions, but is mainly focused on the fusion of uncertain, highly conflicting  and imprecise quantitative or qualitative sources of evidence. DSmT is able to solve complex, static or dynamic fusion problems beyond the limits of the DST framework.

Why do we really need to go beyond DST and Dempster's rule of combination?

For users familiar with belief functions and Dempster's rule, let's consider the following simple example of the combination of two non vacuous basic belief assignments (bba's) m1(.) and m2(.) with 0< a,b1,b2<1

Applying conjunctive rule, one gets

After Dempster's normalization in Dempster's rule, one gets

Conclusion: mDS(.)=m1(.), i.e. the second source m2(.) doesn't count at all in Dempster-Shafer's fusion process, even if m2(.) is NOT vacuous (m2(.) is truly informative) and m2(.) is truly conflicting with m1(.). In fact, the level of conflict doesn't impact (it can be vey high, or very low) the fusion result. Analysis of such unexpected anomaly is available here, or here. A generalization of such type of example can be found in the following Working Note.

To know a bit more on DSmT, please read the short introduction available here.

For any comments, questions and collaborations on DSmT and its applications, please contact me at jean.dezert(at)onera.fr

Generalized Bayesian Inference

In the 2018 paper ''Total Belief Theorem and Generalized Bayes' Theorem'', by Dezert, Tchamova and Han published in Proc. of Fusion 2018 Conference, Cambridge, UK, July 2018, we establish a formal generalization of the Total Probability Theorem and of Bayes' Theorem, called GBT, in the framework of belief functions. We also provide a constructive proof of Fagin-Halpern belief conditioning formulas from Total Belief Theorem (TBT), and examples. This new theoretical result offers a generalized Bayesian inference tool for reasoning under uncertainty.

GBT formula

where

UAibarB.png

and

and where the set of focal elements not included in B, nor in the complement of B w.r.t. the frame of discernment is denoted

Of course, the formula of GBT above reduces to Bayes' Theorem as soon as Bel(.) is a Bayesian Belief function, that is when the focal elements of the unique basic belief assignment m(.) associated with Bel(.) are singletons of the frame of discernment.

Generalized entropy for basic belief assignments

Shannon entropy for pmf can be generalized for BBA as follows (see paper # C168 for details, proofs and examples).

where s(X) is the entropiece of X given by

with u(X)=Pl(X)-Bel(X).

This measure of uncertainty (i.e. entropy) is effective because it satisfies the following four natural desiderata:

 

Information about Silx-Furtif toolbox

The silx-Furtif toolbox is an open source generic library for information fusion based on RUST programming. Main codes of this toolbox project are available at:  
https://crates.io/crates/furtif-core  
https://crates.io/crates/silx-core  
https://crates.io/crates/silx-types  
https://crates.io/crates/hashed-type-def  
https://crates.io/crates/hashed-type-def-core  
https://crates.io/crates/hashed-type-def-procmacro

https://github.com/fdecode/silx-furtif

For details about this project see:

F. Dambreville, J. Dezert, Flexible User-Oriented Rust Toolbox for Information Fusion, in Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion (Collected Works) - Vol. 5, pp. 541-555, Biblio Publishing, OH, USA, Dec. 2023, available here.

 

Teaching activities, supervision and evaluation

 

  • 1993 : ATER, Université d’Orléans, France – Electrical engineering and Computer Science Dept – Cours d’automatique Licence/Maîtrise EEA, Cours/TP Turbo pascal – charge d’enseignement 192h EQTP
  • 2000 – 2005 : Introduction to multisensor-multitarget tracking and Information fusion, Graduate course for EP 324 et EP 310 (sensor fusion) at Ecole Nationale des Techniques Avancées (ENSTA), Boulevard Victor, Paris.
  • Seminars and Tutorials in National and international workshops and conferences
  • March-June 1997 : Superviser of  Gaëlle Bénard, DEA STIR, Rennes1 Univ (extended target tracking)
  • November 1997 : Examiner for Dr. Hervé Gauvrit’s Ph.D. thesis entitled « Extraction multi-pistes : approche probabiliste et approche combinatoire », November 21th,1997, IRISA, Rennes.
  • April-July 2002 : Supervisor of Mr Azziz Louartiti, Student for DEA Statistiques, Paris 6 University: (Multisensor-multitarget tracking with finite sets statistics).
  • December 2004 : Examiner for Samuel Corgne’s Ph.D. defence for the thesis entitled « Modélisation prédictive de l’occupation des sols en contexte agricole intensif : Application à la couverture hivernale des sols en Bretagne», defended on December 10th, 2004, IRISA, Rennes 2 University.
  • March 2007 : Examiner for Stanislas Boutoille Ph.D. Thesis defence entitled « Systèmes de fusion pour la segmentation hors-ligne de signaux GPS multi-porteuses“ Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale – ULCO, Calais, France.
  • July 2007 : Examiner for Mihai Florea Ph.D. Thesis defence entitled : "Combinaison d’informations hétérogènes dans le cadre unificateur des ensembles aléatoires : Approximations et robustesse", Université de Laval, Québec, Canada, July 13th, 2007.
  • September 2008 : Examiner for Pascal Djiknavorian Master Sc. Thesis entitled "Fusion d'informations dans un cadre de raisonnement de Dezert-Smarandache appliquée sur des rapports de capteurs ESM sous le STANAG 1241", Laboratoire de Radiocommunication et de Traitement du Signal, Laval University, Canada.
  • September 2008 : Examiner for Gwenollé Quellec Ph. D. Thesis entitled "Indexation et fusion multimodale pour la recherche d'information par le contenu". Application aux bases de données d'images médicales, Suptélécom Brest, France.
  • November 2009 : Member of examination committee for Jean-Marc Tacnet Ph. D. Thesis entitled " Prise en compte de l'incertitude dans l'expertise des risques naturels en montagne par analyse multicritères et fusion d'information", Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines, Saint-Etienne, France, November 26, 2009.
  • February 2010: Examiner for Willem Van Norden Ph.D. Thesis entitled "Sensing, what matters ?", Delft University of technology, February, 16th, 2010.
  • October 2010 : Examiner for Anas Dahabiah Ph.D. Thesis entitled "Extraction de connaissances et l’indexation de données multimédia pour la détection anticipée d’événement indésirable ", University of Rennes 1, ENSTB, Brest, France, October 8th, 2010.
  • November 2011 : Examiner for Frédéric Dambreville HDR Thesis entitled " Planification de capteurs et fusion de l’information dans un système d’observation et de renseignement", University of Bretagne Occidentale, ENSTA-Brest, France, November 16th, 2011.
  • 2011-2012, co-supervisor with Professor Mercier (Sup-Telecom Brest) of Zhunga Liu, Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China, Topic: data clustering based on belief functions.
  • November 2013 : Examiner for Pascal Djiknavorian Ph.D Thesis entitled "Optimisation d'algorithmes d'approximation de fonctions de croyance généralisées", Laval University, Québec, Canada, November 15th, 2013.
  • December 2013 : Examiner for Bastien Pietropaoli Ph.D Thesis entitled "Reconnaissance de contexte stable pour l’habitat intelligent", Ecole Doctorale MATISSE, IRISA and University Rennes 1, Rennes, France, December 10th, 2013.
  • May 2014 : Examiner for Serge Reboul HDR Thesis entitled "Estimation et détection conjointe en fusion d’informations", Université du Littoral Côte d'Opale, Calais, France, May 21th, 2014.
  • June 19th, 2014 : Examiner for Samuel Corgne HDR Thesis entitled "Etude des changements d'occupation des sols en contexte agricole par télédétection et fusion d'information", Costel Lab, Université Rennes 2, Rennes, France.
  • November 24th, 2014 : Examiner for Zhunga Liu Ph.D Thesis entitled "Credal classification of uncertain data based on belief function theory", at Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China (in co-tutelle with Telecom Bretagne, Brest France) - in co-supervision with Prof Grégoire Mercier.
  • December 18th, 2014 : Fusion de données et décision dans l'incertain basée sur les fonctions de croyance, Cours Master CGN MT6, ENSTA, Palaiseau, France.
  • March 23th, 2015 : Examiner for Wafa Rekik Ph.D Thesis entitled "Représentation, filtrage dynamique et association dans un cadre évidentiel pour le suivi d'objets", Univ. of Sfax, Tunisia in co-tutelle with Univ. Paris-Sud, Orsay, France. Thesis defended in Monastir, Tunisia.
  • April 5th, 2017: Examiner for Simon Carladous Ph.D. Thesis entitled "Approche intégrée d'aide à la décision basée sur la propagation de l'imperfection de l'information - Application à l'efficacité des mesures de protection torrentielle. Thèse de Doctorat de l'Université de Lyon opérée au sein de l'Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne, France. Ecole Doctorale No 488, Sciences, Ingénierie, Santé. Spécialité de doctorat: Sciences et génie de l'environnement.
  • December 8th, 2017: Examiner for Imen Hammami Ph.D. Thesis entitled "Fusion d'images de télédétection hétérogènes par méthodes crédibilistes". Thèse de Doctorat de l'IMT Atlantique Bretagne-Pays de Loire, France,  and el Manar Tunis University, Tunisia.
  • December 12th, 2017: Examiner for Houssein Abdo Ph.D. Thesis entitled "Dealing with uncertainties in risk analysis: combining safety and cyber security". Thèse de Doctorat de la communauté Université Grenoble Alpes, France.
  • August 2019: Examiner of Robin Ping Guan Ph.D. Thesis entitled "Contributions to Mobile Robot localisation in GPS-denied Environments", College of Science, Engineering and Health, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
  • July 21th, 2020: Examiner of Hind Laghmara Ph.D. Thesis entitled "Multiple Object Detection and Association using Belief Theory. Application to Intelligent Vehicle Perception", Université de Haute-Alsace (Mulhouse), France.
  • September 28th, 2020: Examiner of Na Li Ph.D. Thesis entitled "Combination of supervised and unsupervised classifiers based on belief functions", Ecole doctorale no 601: Mathématiques et Sciences et Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication (MATHSTIC) - Spécialité Informatique, Université de Rennes 1, France.

 

ISIF involvement

  • 1999 : Co-founder of International Society of Information Fusion (ISIF), July 1999 (www.isif.org).
  • 1999 : Member of TPC of the 2nd Int. conference on Information Fusion Fusion 1999, Sunnyvale, CA, USA, July 1999.
  • 2000 : Co-organizer of the 3rd Int. conference on Information Fusion, Fusion 2000 at Cité des Sciences, Paris, July 2000.
  • 2001-2009 : Member of  ISIF board, Secretary of ISIF and responsible of the ISIF members data base and ISIF web site until 2003.
  • 2004 : Vice-President of ISIF.
  • 2013-2016 : Member of the ISIF Executive board. - www.isif.org

 

Miscellaneous

  • Reviewer for IEEE Transactions on PAMI, AES, SMC, GRS.
  • Reviewer for IEE Journal (Intitute of Electrical Engineers)
  • Reviewer for EURASIP JASP
  • Reviewer for IET Radar, Sonar & Navigation
  • Reviewer for Journal of Machine Vision and Applications
  • Reviewer for International JUFKBS
  • Reviewer for Signal, Image and Video Processing international journal.
  • Reviewer for several conferences (ISIF Fusion Conf., ECC, FTT, Cogis, …) and books.
  • Former Member of IEEE (AC, AES, SP and IT Societies), and of Eta Kappa Nu (Honor Society of Elec. Eng.).

 

  • 1997 : Invited participation to the french workshop of GT 1 "Information en Signal et Images" on « Extraction de pistes (objets en mouvements) », Oct 17, 1997, Paris.
  • 1997 : Organizer of a seminar on Variable Structure Hybrid Estimation Approach to Target Tracking at ONERA, Invited speaker : Prof. X.-R. Li, (Uno), Aug. 13, 1997.
  • 1998 : Member of program committee of the first international conference on Information Fusion,  FUSION98’, Las Vegas, USA, juillet 1998.
  • 1998 : Participation/chairman to workshop GDR/ISIS and NUWC "Approches Probabilistes pour l'extraction multipiste", 10 nov 1998, ENST, Paris.
  • 2001 : Participation to the publication of proceedings of Workshop on Estimation, Tracking and Fusion (A tribute to Yaakov Bar-Shalom), Naval Postgraduate school, Monterey, CA, May 17, 2001.
  • 2001-2007 : Member of technical program committee of Int. Conf. on Information Fusion (ISIF Fusion conf.)
  • 2003 : Invited researcher at EE Dept of Melbourne Univ, Australia during July 2003.
  • 2005 : Member of technical program committee of 10th Int. Conf. on Fuzzy Theory and technology, Salt Lake City, June 2005 and Fusion 2005 Int. Conf on Information Fusion, Philadelphia, PA, July 2005.
  • 2007--2009 : Member of Technical Program Committee of Cogis'07, Cogis'08, & Cogis'09
  • 2009 : Member of Technical Program Committee of 3rd International Workshop on Soft Computing Applications (SOFA 09), July 29- Aug 1, 2009, Arad, Romania.
  • 2010 : Member of Technical Program Committee of International Workshop on Belief Functions, April 1-2, 2010, ENSIETA, Brest, France.
  • 2010-2013 : Member of Technical Program Committee of International Conf on Information Fusion, Fusion 2010--2013
  • 2012 : Member of Technical Program Committee of Belief 2012,  Compiègne, France, May 2012.
  • 2013 : Member of Technical Program Committee of Fusion 2013 In. Conf, Istanbul, Turkey, July 9-12, 2013.
  • 2014 : Member of Technical Program Committee of Fusion 2014 In. Conf, Salamanca, Spain, July 7-10, 2014.
  • 2014 : Member of Technical Program Committee of Belief 2014,  Oxford, UK, Sept 26-28, 2014.
  • 2015 : Member of the Program Committee of SPIE DSS/Defense Security on Signal Processing, Sensor/Information Fusion and Target Recognition XXIV, Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, MD, USA, April 20-24, 2015.
  • 2015 : Member of Technical Program Committee of Fusion 2015 Int. Conf, Washington D.C., USA, July 6-9, 2015.
  • 2016 : Member of Technical Program Committee of Fusion 2016 Int. Conf, Heidelberg, Germany, July 5-8, 2016.
  • 2016 : Member of the Programme Committee of Belief 2016 Int. Conf, Prague, CZ, September 21-23, 2016.