Informationstiefen

Informationstiefen is a German-language interdisciplinary term used to describe the depth or layers of information contained in a communication, dataset, model or knowledge representation. It refers to how far information extends beyond surface features (such as raw data or metadata) into contextual, semantic or inferential layers that enable more complex interpretation, reasoning or decision-making.

The concept is applied in fields including information theory, data science, information retrieval, cognitive psychology and knowledge engineering. In these contexts Informationstiefen can denote semantic richness, degree of abstraction, or the amount of implicit knowledge that must be inferred to use or understand the information. Measurement approaches vary by discipline and may rely on metrics from information theory (entropy, mutual information), semantic similarity measures, hierarchical modeling, or qualitative assessment of context and provenance.

Practical applications include designing search and recommendation systems that surface deeper context, structuring educational materials to progress from surface facts to conceptual understanding, and assessing the risk that data releases reveal sensitive, inferable information. Challenges in working with Informationstiefen include operationalizing and quantifying depth, balancing depth against accessibility and computational cost, and managing privacy risks when deeper layers enable sensitive inferences. Related concepts include data granularity, semantic depth, information richness and latent representation. The term is sometimes translated into English as information depth or depth of information.