Dr. Robert Stahlbock

One focus of my research interests is the field of information systems, data analysis and application of bioanalogical algorithms (artificial neural nets, evolutionary algorithms) as well as support vector machines for solving economic forecasting problems and classification tasks to support managerial decision making. The objective beside of the problem modelling is the examination and the improvement of the efficiency and performance of existing algorithms. Within my PhD thesis a combination of evolutionary algorithms for data selection and construction of neural nets was developed and successfully applied to a real-world problem. Applications of artificial neural nets (like Multilayer Perceptron, Learning Vector Quantization, Probabilistic Neural Net) and their evolutionary design, if possible implemented as parallel algorithm on a PC network, have been examined in cooperation with companies. Results of good quality have been demonstrated.

Another field of research is the examination and application of methods of operations research for solving logistic problems at maritime container terminals with focus on crane scheduling in an automated yard.

You can find more information on forecasting and data mining with neural networks and support vector machines at BISlab.com which is the main homepage of the institutes competence centre for business intelligence. 

• Graduate School chair and representative of the academic staff at the BA Faculty,  University of Hamburg
• Member of the Editorial Board of the "Journal of Shipping and Trade" (JST), Springer
• 2018-now: General Chair of the International Conference on Data Science (ICDATA), Las Vegas, NV, USA
• 2006-2017: General Conference Chair of the International Conference on Data Mining  (DMIN), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
• Member of the Program Committee of the 3rd Workshop on Quality Issues, Measures of Interestingness and Evaluation of Data Mining Models 2013 (QIMIE'13), organized in association with the Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining 2013 (PAKDD'13), April 14-17, 2013, Gold Coast, Australia    
• Member of the Program Committee and Co-Organizer of the 3rd International Conference on Computational Logistics 2012 (ICCL 2012), Shanghai,China    
• Member of the Program Committee of IADIS International Conference WWW/Internet 2011, Nov 5-8, 2011, Rio de Janeiro, Brazi   
• Member of the Program Committee and Co-Organizer of the 2nd International Conference on Computational Logistics 2011 (ICCL 2011), Hamburg, Germany    
• Member of the Program Committee of the International Network Optimization Conference 2011 (INOC 2011), Hamburg, Germany
• Member of the Program Committee of the Quality issues, measures of interestingness and evaluation of data mining models Workshop 2011 (QIMIE'11), organized in association with the Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining 2011 (PAKDD'11), Shenzhen, China
• Member of the Program Committee of the Quality issues, measures of interestingness and evaluation of data mining models Workshop 2009 (QIMIE'09), organized in association with the Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining 2009 (PAKDD'09), Bangkok, Thailand
• Member of the Program Committee of the Track KDBI - Knowledge Discovery and Business Intelligence of the 14th Portuguese Conf. on Artificial Intelligence (EPIA 2009), Oct 12-15, 2009, University of Aveiro, Portugal
• Member of the Program Committee of the IADIS WWW/Internet 2008 Conference (ICWI 2008), Freiburg, Germany    
• Member of the Organizing Committee of the Workshop on Business Intelligence (BI'07) organized in association with the Portuguese Conference on Artificial Intelligence (EPIA 2007), Guimarães, Portugal
• Invited reviewer for The 13th International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP2006) and other international conferences such as IEEE IJCNN, IEEE WCCI, HICSS, HMS, etc.
• Invited reviewer for the European Journal of Operational Research; Transportation Science; Decision Support Systems; Transportation Research (Part E); Journal of Data & Knowledge Engineering; International Journal of Forecasting; Flexible Services and Manufacturing; International Journal of Industrial Engineering: Theory, Applications and Practice; Mathematical and Computer Modelling; and several other international journals    

Undergraduate Teaching

• Introduction to Business Administration
• Exercise courses on Statistics
• Tutorials on Information Systems/Management
• Introductory Seminar for Industrial Engineers, e.g. on Maritime Logistics
• Introduction to common IT Office Applications
• Supervision of Introductory Seminar Theses and Bachelor Theses
• E-Business
• Study

Graduate Teaching

• Business Intelligence and Data Mining (Theory, Methods, Exercises RapidMiner)
• Supervision of Master Theses
• Study
• Project/Seminar

Postgraduate Teaching

• Supervision of working papers and presentations in Seminars on Information Management and Logistics

Books:

R. Stahlbock (2002) Evolutionäre Entwicklung künstlicher neuronaler Netze zur Lösung betriebswirtschaftlicher Klassifikationsprobleme. WiKu, Berlin

Peer-reviewed journals:

R. Stahlbock, L. Heilig, S. Voß (2018) Blockchain in der maritimen Logistik, HMD Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik 55(6), 1185-1203; DOI 10.1365/s40702-018-00464-8 [Springer]

K. Tierney, S. Voß, R. Stahlbock (2013) A Mathematical Model of Inter-Terminal Transportation, European Journal of Operational Research, 10.1016/j.ejor.2013.07.007 [Elsevier]  

P. Großkurth, R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2011) Economic Impacts of the Alternative Reuse of Empty ISO Containers, LNCS 6971, 142-159; DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-24264-9_11 [Springer]    

J. Klaws, R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2011) Container Terminal Yard Operations - Simulation of a Side-Loaded Container Block Served by Triple Rail Mounted Gantry Cranes, LNCS 6971, 243-255; DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-24264-9_19 [Springer]

R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2010) Efficiency considerations for sequencing and scheduling of double rail mounted gantry cranes at maritime container terminals, International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics, 2(1): 95-123; DOI 10.1504/IJSTL.2010.029899 [Inderscience]

R. Stahlbock, Stefan Lessmann, Sven F. Crone (2010) Data Mining and Information Systems: Quo Vadis?, Data Mining (R. Stahlbock, Sven F. Crone, S. Lessmann (Eds.), Annals of Information Systems 8: 1-15
 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1280-0_1 [Springer]; ISSN 1934-3221

R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2008) Operations research at container terminals - a literature update, OR Spectrum 30: 1-52  [Springer]

S.F. Crone, S. Lessmann, R. Stahlbock (2005) The impact of preprocessing on data mining: An evaluation of classifier sensitivity in direct marketing, European Journal of Operational Research 173: 781-800  [Elsevier]

D. Steenken, S. Voß, R. Stahlbock (2004) Container terminal operation and operations research - a classification and literature review, OR Spectrum 26: 3-49 [Springer]

Reviewed conference proceedings:

J. Daduna, R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2012) Transport Systems for Linking Seaport Container Terminals and Dedicated Satellite Terminals. Proc. of The 2012 Intern. Conf. on Logistics and Maritime Systems (LOGMS, Aug. 22-24, 2012, Bremen, Germany)     
J. Meyer, R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2012) Slow steaming in container shipping. In: R.H. Sprague (ed.): Proc. of the 45th Annual Hawaii Intern. Conf. on System Sciences (HICSS-45, Jan 4-7, Grand Wailea, Maui, Hawaii), IEEE, Piscataway, 1306-1314
[DOI 10.1109/HICSS.2012.529]

    
R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2011) Maritime container terminals: Perspectives and challenges in the post-crisis
era. In: W.Y. Szeto, S.C. Wong, and N.N. Sze (eds.) Transportdynamics. Proc. of the 16th Intern. Conf. of Hong Kong Society for Transport Studies (HKSTS), Dec. 17-20, 2011, Hong Kong, 281-288 [ISBN 978-988-98847-9-6]

    
R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2011) Environmental-friendly container transport - challenges and instruments of green maritime logistics. Proc. of the IAME 2011 Conference, Oct. 25-28, Santiago de Chile    
         
R. Stahlbock,  S. Voß (2010) Green Maritime Transport – State of the Art and Challenges, In:  A. Sumalee, W.H.K. Lam, H.W. Lo and B. Siu (Eds.): Proc. of the 15th HKSTS International Conf. - Transportation and Urban Sustainability (Dec. 11-14, 2010, Hong Kong, China), Hong Kong Society for Transportation Studies (HKSTS), Hong Kong, 263-270, ISBN 978-988-98847-8-9

F. Schwartz, R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2009) Evaluation of postponement activities in dry ports. Proc. of the IAME 2009 Conference, June 24-26, Copenhagen

R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2009) A Branch and Bound Method for Sequencing Double Rail Mounted Gantry Cranes at a Maritime Container Terminal. Presented at the International Symposium on Maritime Logistics and Supply Chains (MLOG, April 23-24, Singapore)

R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2009) Improving the Logistics of Moving Empty Containers. Presented at the International Symposium on Maritime Logistics and Supply Chains (MLOG, April 23-24, Singapore)

R. Stahlbock (2008) Neural Classification Approach for Short Term Forecast of Exchange Rate Movement with Point and Figure Charts, In: Proc. of the Int. Joint Conf. on Neural Networks (IJCNN'08, part of the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2008)), 2008 (June 1-6, 2008, Hong Kong, China), IEEE, 2842-2849

S. Lessmann, S.F. Crone, R. Stahlbock, N. Zacher (2006) An evaluation of support vector machines for cost-sensitive learning, In: Proc. of the Int. Joint Conf. on Neural Networks (IJCNN'06, part of the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2006)) 2006 (July 16-21, 2006, Vancouver, Canada), IEEE, 347-354

S. Lessmann, R. Stahlbock, S.F. Crone (2006) Genetic algorithms for support vector machine model selection, In: Proc. of the Int. Joint Conf. on Neural Networks (IJCNN'06, part of the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2006)) 2006 (July 16-21, 2006, Vancouver, Canada), IEEE, 3063-3069

S. Lessmann, R. Stahlbock, S.F. Crone (2006) Genetically constructed kernels for support vector machines, In: Haasis, H.-D., Kopfer, H. and Schönberger, J. (Eds.): Operations Research Proceedings 2005 : Selected Papers of the Annual Intern.l Conf. of the German Operations Research Society (GOR) (Sep 7–9, 2005, Bremen, Germany), Springer, Heidelberg, 257-262 [Springer]

R. Stahlbock, S.F. Crone (2005) Evolutionary Neural Classification for Evaluation of Retail Stores and Decision Support, In: Proc. Int. Joint Conf. on Neural Networks (IJCNN) 2005 (July 31-Aug 4, 2005, Montréal, Canada), IEEE, Piscataway, 1499-1504

S.F. Crone, S. Lessmann, R. Stahlbock (2005) Utility Based Data Mining for Time Series Analysis - Cost-sensitive Learning for Neural Network Predictors, In: Weiss, G., Saar-Tsechansky, M., Zadrozny, B. (Eds.): Proc. of the 1st Int. Workshop on Utility based Data Mining (ACM SIG-KDD'05, Chicago, USA), 59-68 [preliminary working paper ]

R. Stahlbock, S.F. Crone, S. Lessmann (2005) Evolutionary Neural Classification Approaches for Strategic and Operational Decision Support in Retail Store Planning, In: Arabnia, H. (Ed.): Proc. Int. Conf. on Artificial Intelligence (IC-AI'05, June 27-30, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA), CSREA Press, Vol. I, 60-66 [preliminary working paper ]

S. Lessmann, R. Stahlbock, S.F. Crone (2005) Optimizing Hyperparameters of Support Vector Machines by Genetic Algorithms. In: Arabnia, H. (Ed.): Proc. Int. Conf. on Artificial Intelligence (IC-AI'05, June 27-30, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA), CSREA Press (2005), Vol. I, 74-80

S.F. Crone, S. Lessmann, R. Stahlbock (2005) A New Perspective on Forecasting Seasonal Time Series with Artificial Neural Networks. In: Arabnia, H. (Ed.): Proc. Int. Conf. on Artificial Intelligence (IC-AI'05, June 27-30, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, CSREA Press) - accepted for publication in post-proceedings

R. Stahlbock (2004) An Evolutionary Neural Classification Approach to Evaluate Retail Stores and Support Decisions on Their Location, In-Store Design and Assortment, In: Arabnia, H. (Ed.): Proc. Int. Conf. on Artificial Intelligence (IC-AI’04, June 21-24, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA), CSREA Press (2004), Vol. I, 228-234

S.F. Crone, S. Lessmann, R. Stahlbock (2004) Empirical Comparison and Evaluation of Classifier Performance for Data Mining in Customer Relationship Management. In: D. Wunsch et al. (Eds.): Proc. Int. Joint Conf. on Neural Networks (IJCNN) 2004 (July 25-29, Budapest, Hungary), IEEE, Piscataway, 443-448 [preliminary working paper ]

R. Stahlbock (2000) Devisenkursprognose mit neuronalen Netzen. In: Cleve, J. (Ed.): Proc. WIWITA 2000 - 2. Wismarer Wirtschaftsinformatiktage (June 15-16, Hochschule Wismar, Fachbereich Wirtschaft), 154-160

Conference papers and talks (typically extended abstracts, sometimes printed in proceedings; selection):

R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2012) Environmental-friendly Container Transport - Challenges and Instruments of Green Maritime Logistics. Presented by S. Voß at the Intern. Conf. on Sustainable Growth through Green and Secure Logistics (Nov. 01, Shanghai, China)

J. Daduna, R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2012) Transport Systems for Linking Seaport Container Terminals and Dedicated Satellite Terminals. Presented by J. Daduna at The 3rd Intern. Conf. on Computational Logistics (ICCL 2012, Sept. 24-26, Shanghai, China)

N. Emmer, R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2012) Simulation of Rail Mounted Gantry Crane Systems in a Container Terminal Yard. Presented by S. Voß at The 2012 Intern. Conf. on Logistics and Maritime Systems (LOGMS, Aug. 22-24, 2012, Bremen, Germany)

R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2012) The Thailand Canal and its Impact on Maritime Logistics. Presented at The 2012 Intern. Conf. on Logistics and Maritime Systems (LOGMS, Aug. 22-24, 2012, Bremen, Germany)

R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2011) Green Maritime Transport - State of the Art and Challenges. Presented by S. Voß at the 2nd Intern. Conf. on Computational Logistics (ICCL 2011, Sept. 19-22, 2011, Hamburg, Germany)

S. Voß, R. Stahlbock, J. Böse (2011) Perspectives and Challenges of Modern Maritime Container Terminals. Presented at the PORTeC Workshop on the Future of Container Terminal Automation (April 5, 2011, Imperial College London)

R. Stahlbock (2010) Classification Approaches for Strategic and Operational Decision Support in Retail Store Planning. Presented at the ICCL 2010 - The 1st International Conference on Computational Logistics (Sept. 20-22, 2010, Shanghai, China)

R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2010) Data Mining – Decision Support in Container Logistics. Presented at the ICCL 2010 - The 1st International Conference on Computational Logistics (September 20-22, 2010, Shanghai, China)

R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2010) Empty Container Management - State of the Art. Presented at the LOGMS 2010 - The 2010 International Conference on Logistics and Maritime Systems (September 15-17, 2010, Busan, Korea)

R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2010) Container Logistics and Data Mining. Presented at the LOGMS 2010 - The 2010 International Conference on Logistics and Maritime Systems (September 15-17, 2010, Busan, Korea)

S. Voß, R. Stahlbock (2010) Improving the logistics of moving empty containers - Can new concepts avoid a collapse in container transportation? Presented by S. Voß at EURO XXIV, 24th European Conference on Operational Research (July 11-14, Lisbon, Portugal)

S. Voß, R. Stahlbock (2010) Improving the logistics of moving empty containers - Can new concepts avoid a collapse in container transportation? Presented by S. Voß at TRISTAN VII, 7th Triennial Symposium on Transportation Analysis (June 20-25, Tromsø, Norway)

R. Stahlbock, S. Voß, R. Eisenberg (2008) Increasing the efficiency of container terminals by automated double rail mounted gantry cranes. Presented at the German-Korean Workshop on Container Terminal Management : IT-based Planning and Control of Seaport Container Terminals and Transportation Systems (Aug 27-31, Bremen, Germany)

R. Stahlbock, X. Shi, S. Voß (2008) Can new concepts avoid a collapse in container transport? Presented by S. Voß at the 3rd German-Korean Workshop on Container Terminal Management : IT-based Planning and Control of Seaport Container Terminals and Transportation Systems (Aug 27-31, Bremen, Germany)

S. Voß, X. Shi, R. Stahlbock (2008) Container terminal operation and Operations Research - Recent challenges. Presented by S. Voß at the 3rd German-Korean Workshop on Container Terminal Management : IT-based Planning and Control of Seaport Container Terminals and Transportation Systems (Aug 27-31, Bremen, Germany)

S. Voß, R. Stahlbock, D. Steenken (2006) Container Terminal Operation and Operations Research. Presented by S. Voß at 4th US-European Workshop on Logistics and Supply Chain Management - An International Research Perspective (July 8-9, 2006, Hamburg, Germany)

S. Voß, R. Stahlbock, R. Eisenberg, D. Steenken (2005) Simulation of Double Rail Mounted Gantry Cranes. Presented by S. Voß at IFORS Triennial 2005 (July 11-15, 2005, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA)

S. Voß, D. Steenken, R. Stahlbock (2005) Operations research methods for container terminal logistics - a survey. Presented by S. Voß at IFORS Triennial 2005 (July 11-15, 2005, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA)

S. Voß, R. Stahlbock, D. Steenken (2004) A survey on operations research applications in container terminal logistics. Presented by S. Voß at TRISTAN V: The Fifth Triennial Symposium on Transportation Analysis (June 13-18, 2004, Le Gosier, Guadeloupe, French West Indies)

Book chapters:

R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2010) Improving empty container logistics – Can it avoid a collapse in container transportation? In: L. Kroon, T. Li and R. Zuidwijk (eds.) Liber Amicorum In Memoriam Jo Van Nunen, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Rotterdam (2010), 217-224

R. Stahlbock, S. Voß (2008) Vehicle Routing Problems and Container Terminal Operations - An Update of Research. In: B. Golden, S. Raghavan, E. Wasil (Eds.): The Vehicle Routing Problem: Latest Advances and New Challenges, Springer US, 2008, 551-589; book: ISBN 978-0-387-77777-1; chapter: DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-77778-8

S. Lessmann, R. Stahlbock (2005) Support Vektor Klassifikatoren im analytischen Kundenbeziehungsmanagement. In: Rommelfanger, H. (Ed.): Neue Anwendungen von Fuzzy-Logik und Künstlicher Intelligenz, Shaker, Aachen, 113-124

S. F. Crone, S. Lessmann, R. Stahlbock (2005) Support Vector Machines Versus Artificial Neural Networks - New Potential in Data Mining for Customer Relationship Management? In: Wang, D., Lee, K. (Eds.): Neural Networks Applications in Information Technology and Web Engineering, Borneo Publishing, Malaysia, 80-93

D. Steenken, S. Voß, R. Stahlbock (2005) Container terminal operation and operations research - a classification and literature review. In: Günther, H.-O., Kim K.H. (Eds.): Container Terminals and Automated Transport Systems, Springer, Berlin, 3-49 [Springer - Kapitel] [Springer - Buchinfo]

Other Publications:

R. Stahlbock (2012; with J.R. Daduna and S. Voß) Transport systems for linking seaport container terminals and dedicated satellite terminals, Working Paper, HWR Berlin and University of Hamburg

R. Stahlbock (2012) Book Review: Yin, Yong, Ikou Kaku, Jiafu Tang, Jian-Ming Zhu. 2011. Data Mining: Concepts, Methods and Applications in Management and Engineering Design. Springer, Heidelberg, Germany. 312 pp. Interfaces 42(4), 415-417, DOI

R. Stahlbock, S. Lessmann (2003) Potential von Support Vektor Maschinen im analytischen Customer Relationship Management, Technical Report TR-01-2003, Institute of Information Systems, University of Hamburg, Germany
         
B. Alex, R. Stahlbock (1996) Unterstützung von Managementaufgaben mit NeuralWare Predict. In: NewsServer 2/1996, pp. 28-30

Editorships:

R. Stahlbock, G. M. Weiss (eds.) (2013) Proc. of The 2013 Intern. Conf. on Data Mining (DMIN'13), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, July 22-25, 2013, CSREA Press

R. Stahlbock (with H. Hu, X. Shi, S. Voß): Computational Logistics - Proc. of the Third International Conference, ICCL 2012, Shanghai, China, September 2012, LNCS 7555, Springer

R. Stahlbock, G. M. Weiss (eds.) (2012) Proc. of The 2012 Intern. Conf. on Data Mining (DMIN'12), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, July 16-19, 2012, CSREA Press

R. Stahlbock (with J. Böse, H. Hu, C. Jahn, X. Shi, S. Voß): Computational Logistics - Proc. of the Second International Conference, ICCL 2011, Hamburg, Germany, September 2011, LNCS 6971, Springer

R. Stahlbock (ed.) (2011) Proc. of The 2011 Intern. Conf. on Data Mining (DMIN'11), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, July 18-21, 2011, CSREA Press

R. Stahlbock, S. F. Crone (eds.) (2010)  Proc. of The 2010 Intern. Conf. on Data Mining (DMIN'10), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, July 12-15, 2010, CSREA Press

R. Stahlbock, S. F. Crone, S. Lessmann (eds.) (2009)  Proc. of The 2009 Intern. Conf. on Data Mining (DMIN'09), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, July 13-16, 2009, CSREA Press

R. Stahlbock, S. F. Crone, S. Lessmann, (2009),  Data Mining - Special Issue in Annals of Information Systems, Vol. 8, 2010, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1280-0, ISSN 1934-3221 [Springer]

R. Stahlbock, S. F. Crone, S. Lessmann (eds.) (2008)  Proc. of The 2008 Intern. Conf. on Data Mining (DMIN'08), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, July 14-17, 2008, CSREA Press (Vol. I, II)

R. Stahlbock, S. F. Crone, S. Lessmann (eds.) (2007)  Proc. of The 2007 Intern. Conf. on Data Mining (DMIN'07), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, June 25-28, 2007, CSREA Press

S. F. Crone, S. Lessmann, R. Stahlbock (eds.) (2006)  Proc. of The 2006 Intern. Conf. on Data Mining (DMIN'06), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, June 26-29, 2006, CSREA Press

S. F. Crone, S. Lessmann, R. Stahlbock (associate eds.) (2005)  Proc. of The 2005 Intern. Conf. on Artificial Intelligence (ICAI'05), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, June 27-30, 2005, CSREA Press