The DIKW pyramid (also known as the knowledge pyramid or information hierarchy) is a model describing relationships between data, information, knowledge and wisdom sometimes also stylized as a chain, refer to models of possible structural and functional relationships between a set of components—often four, data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. The concept has roots predating the 1980s. In the latter years of that decade, interest in the models grew after explicit presentations and discussions, including from Milan Zeleny, Russell Ackoff, and Robert W. Lucky. Subsequent important discussions extended along theoretical and practical lines into the coming decades. While debate continues as to actual meaning of the component terms of DIKW-type models, and the actual nature of their relationships—including occasional doubt being cast over any simple, linear, unidirectional model—even so they have become very popular visual representations in use by business, the military, and others. Among the academic and popular, not all versions of the DIKW-type models include all four components (earlier ones excluding data, later ones excluding or downplaying wisdom, and several including additional components (for instance Ackoff inserting "understanding" before and Zeleny adding "enlightenment" after the wisdom component). In addition, DIKW-type models are no longer always presented as pyramids, instead also as a chart or framework (e.g., by Zeleny), as flow diagrams (e.g., by Liew, and by Chisholm et al.), and sometimes as a continuum (e.g., by Choo et al.). == Short description == As Rowley noted in 2007, the DIKW model "is often quoted, or used implicitly, in definitions of data, information and knowledge in the information management, information systems and knowledge management literatures, but [as of that date] there ha[d] been limited direct discussion of the hierarchy". Reviews of textbooks and a survey of scholars in relevant fields indicate that there was not a consensus as to definitions used in the model as of that date, and as reviewed by Liew in that year, even less "in the description of the processes that transform components lower in the hierarchy into those above them". Zins work, published in 2007—from studies in 2003-2005 that documented "130 definitions of data, information, and knowledge formulated by 45 scholars", published in 2007—to suggest that the data–information–knowledge components of DIKW refer to a class of no less than five models, as a function of whether data, information, and knowledge are each conceived of as subjective, objective (what Zins terms, "universal" or "collective") or both. In Zins' usage, subjective and objective "are not related to arbitrariness and truthfulness, which are usually attached to the concepts of subjective knowledge and objective knowledge". Information science, Zins argues, studies data and information, but not knowledge, as knowledge is an internal (subjective) rather than an external (universal–collective) phenomenon. == Representations == === Graphical representation === DIKW is a hierarchical model often depicted as a pyramid, sometimes as a chain, with data at its base and wisdom at its apex (or chain-beginning and -end). Both Zeleny and Ackoff have been credited with originating the pyramid representation, although neither used a pyramid to present their ideas. According to Wallace, Debons and colleagues may have been the first to "present the hierarchy graphically". Many variations of the DIKW-type pyramid have been produced. One, in use by knowledge managers in the United States Department of Defense, attempts to show the DIKW progression to enable effective decisions and consequent activities supporting shared understanding throughout defense organizations, as well as supporting management of risks associated with decisions. DIKW-type hierarchical information paradigms have also been represented as two-dimensional charts, and as flow diagrams, where relationships between the components may be presented less hierarchically, with defining aspects of the relationships, feedback loops, etc. === Computational representation === Intelligent decision support systems are trying to improve decision making by introducing new technologies and methods from the domain of modeling and simulation in general, and in particular from the domain of intelligent software agents in the contexts of agent-based modeling. The following example describes a military decision support system, but the architecture and underlying conceptual idea are transferable to other application domains: The value chain starts with data quality describing the information within the underlying command and control systems. Information quality tracks the completeness, correctness, currency, consistency and precision of the data items and information statements available. Knowledge quality deals with procedural knowledge and information embedded in the command and control system such as templates for adversary forces, assumptions about entities such as ranges and weapons, and doctrinal assumptions, often coded as rules. Awareness quality measures the degree of using the information and knowledge embedded within the command and control system. Awareness is explicitly placed in the cognitive domain. By the introduction of a common operational picture, data are put into context, which leads to information instead of data. The next step, which is enabled by service-oriented web-based infrastructures (but not yet operationally used), is the use of models and simulations for decision support. Simulation systems are the prototype for procedural knowledge, which is the basis for knowledge quality. Finally, using intelligent software agents to continually observe the battle sphere, apply models and simulations to analyze what is going on, to monitor the execution of a plan, and to do all the tasks necessary to make the decision maker aware of what is going on, command and control systems could even support situational awareness, the level in the value chain traditionally limited to pure cognitive methods. == History == Danny P. Wallace, a professor of library and information science, explained that the origin of the DIKW pyramid is uncertain: The presentation of the relationships among data, information, knowledge, and sometimes wisdom in a hierarchical arrangement has been part of the language of information science for many years. Although it is uncertain when and by whom those relationships were first presented, the ubiquity of the notion of a hierarchy is embedded in the use of the acronym DIKW as a shorthand representation for the data-to-information-to-knowledge-to-wisdom transformation.Many authors think that the idea of the DIKW relationship originated from two lines in the poem "Choruses", by T. S. Eliot, that appeared in the pageant play The Rock, in 1934: === Knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom === In 1927, Clarence W. Barron addressed his employees at Dow Jones & Company on the hierarchy: "Knowledge, Intelligence and Wisdom". === Data, information, knowledge === In 1955, English-American economist and educator Kenneth Boulding presented a variation on the hierarchy consisting of "signals, messages, information, and knowledge". However, "[t]he first author to distinguish among data, information, and knowledge and to also employ the term 'knowledge management' may have been American educator Nicholas L. Henry", in a 1974 journal article. === Data, information, knowledge, wisdom === Other early versions (prior to 1982) of the hierarchy that refer to a data tier include those of Chinese-American geographer Yi-Fu Tuan and sociologist-historian Daniel Bell.. In 1980, Irish-born engineer Mike Cooley invoked the same hierarchy in his critique of automation and computerization, in his book Architect or Bee?: The Human / Technology Relationship. Thereafter, in 1987, Czechoslovakia-born educator Milan Zeleny mapped the components of the hierarchy to knowledge forms: know-nothing, know-what, know-how, and know-why. Zeleny "has frequently been credited with proposing the [representation of DIKW as a pyramid ]... although he actually made no reference to any such graphical model." The hierarchy appears again in a 1988 address to the International Society for General Systems Research, by American organizational theorist Russell Ackoff, published in 1989. Subsequent authors and textbooks cite Ackoff's as the "original articulation" of the hierarchy or otherwise credit Ackoff with its proposal. Ackoff's version of the model includes an understanding tier (as Adler had, before him), interposed between knowledge and wisdom. Although Ackoff did not present the hierarchy graphically, he has also been credited with its representation as a pyramid. In 1989, Bell Labs veteran Robert W. Lucky wrote about the four-tier "information hierarchy" in the form of a pyramid in his book Silicon Dreams. In the same year as Ackoff presented his a
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