DIKW Hierarchy

DIKW Hierarchy represents the relationship between data, information knowledge and wisdom. It is also referred to as Wisdom Hierarchy, Knowledge Hierarchy, Information Hierarchy and Knowledge Pyramid.

Besides the four components represented by the above figure, it is worthwhile to note the basis of origin of ‘data’. We can term this component as ‘Reality’. It is the entities that are available in any given environment. These are the raw facts and are in the raw form. These entities when collected or measured form ‘Data’. Data has attributes. The attribute could be codes that can be used for identification, representation, recording or storing a data.

‘Information’ is obtained by processing the Data. The processing could be organizing, sorting, establishing relationship etc. Thus, Information has context. In other words we can say that Information is created when relationship and connections between the Data is analysed. It helps in ‘knowing’ the data, i.e. answering the simple questions based on – who, what, when and where. Way of processing Data to obtain the Information is based on the target audience.

When Information is processed by virtue of being refined, reformatted, grouped, etc., it leads to creation of ‘Knowledge’. Knowledge has learning. It answers “how” questions. It enables evolving ways for learning and innovation.

When knowledge is used based on the expertise of an individual, ‘Wisdom’ is created. It answers the “Why” questions. It deals with the future and related decision making.

It should also be noted that Information & Data are explicit and easily transferable whereas Knowledge & Wisdom are contextual, tacit and its transfer would need learning. Also, Wisdom is human dependent and based on individual’s judgement.

For basic understanding flow happens from Data to Information to Knowledge to Wisdom, but practically this flow is recursive. It can be argued that knowledge is required to know what data to collect and how to collect it or what information to process. This makes the model recursive.