The maturation of gformation system (GIS) technology has revolutionized the use of geospatial data. However, the data required for hydrocarbon resource analysis is inherently three-dimensional (3-D), whereas a conventional two-dimensional (2-D) paradigm has dominated mainstream CIS development. Progress on 3-D GIS has occurred in basic display of points, lines, surfaces and volumes and in the integration of raster (grid) and vector data types. To fully leverage 2-D GIS technology for local and regional hydrocarbon analysis in 3-D, two areas of research hold the highest promise.The most important challenge is in development of a robust model of a 3-D grid compatible with the market-leading platforms. This includes not only models for data indexing, storage and access, but 3-D grid algebraic and spatial operators. Exploitation of 3-D grid data also requires operators for the interaction between raster and vector data types.The second fulcrum of advance is development of easy data interoperability between 3-D GIS and market-leading platforms for analysis of 2-D and 3-D seismic data, digital well logs and for reservoir simulation. The oil and gas industry's investment in these systems and data to support them makes interoperability fundamental to application of 3-D GIS to practical problems of hydrocarbon exploration, production and assessment.Visualization quality in 3-D GIS comparable with seismic workstations will catalyze both use and development of the technology. However, the durable advantage to 3-D GIS in hydrocarbon analysis is in the extraction of attribute data from mixed vector and raster sets based on absolute and relative 3-D location as well as logical conditions. The greatest return will be in the application of 3-D GIS tools to 3-D seismic combined with other vector and raster data types.Examples of the current state of the art are drawn from a 2-D and 3-D GIS directly integrating ～30 gigabytes of data covering approximately 1,000 oil and gas fields in the American sector of the Gulf of Mexico.
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