  Progress in sensor technologies has made three-dimensional (3D)
representations of the physical world available at a large scale. Leveraging
such 3D representations with analytics has the potential to advance Information
Systems (IS) research in several areas. However, this novel data type has
rarely been incorporated. To address this shortcoming, this article first
presents two showcases of 3D analytics applications together with general
modeling guidelines for 3D analytics, in order to support IS researchers in
implementing research designs with 3D components. Second, the article presents
several promising opportunities for 3D analytics to advance behavioral and
design-oriented IS research in several contextual areas, such as healthcare IS,
human-computer interaction, mobile commerce, energy informatics and others.
Third, we investigate the nature of the benefits resulting from the application
of 3D analytics, resulting in a list of common tasks of research projects that
3D analytics can support, regardless of the contextual application area. Based
on the given showcases, modeling guidelines, research opportunities and
task-related benefits, we encourage IS researchers to start their journey into
this largely unexplored third spatial dimension.
