Evolution of Data into an Information Hierarchy

The data, information, knowledge, and wisdom (DIKW) hierarchy manifests a structural and functional description of the processes that transform data into information, information into knowledge, and knowledge into wisdom. This paper introduces a new modeling methodology that treats data and information as the fundamental notions in theories of processing and transformation, thus avoiding the controversy surrounding the DIKW hierarchy. The resultant description aims at building a conceptual architecture of the evolution of data into higher levels in the ladder of processes in an organization. A sample project is used to illustrate the new approach.