German website

My activities in scheduling and logistics are inspired by a project conducted at Daimler telematics research from 1999 - 2001:

The Tourist Information System (TIS) originally was an application benchmark for a service-oriented software architecture with decentralized information allocation.

In the future, my focus is more in automatic classification of meaning as this is done in semantic nets, but I am still open for software implementation aspects for a genuine consideration of real life.

A second focus is in scheduling several tasks in an otimal order which is a specialisation of the traveling salesman problem.

The application scenario is as follows: The user, a tourist or traveling salesman, is visiting a city and wants to combine his business activities with private interests. I.e., he has got fixed appointments at certain places and wants to spend the rest of the time at some places of his interest which he cannot specify exactly.

The TIS provides the user with the feature to enter the fixed dates into an organization schedule. As a value-added service, the TIS suggests to do more activities and makes suggestions which the user may select from a menu. The user may configure the place, order and time of all his activities. The TIS consults the user in this issue considering the time needed to commute from one place of activity to the other. The user can give preferences which type of transportation he prefers.

The modules of the TIS should be loosely connected and easily exchangable. This specially holds for the information providers who should not be managed centrally. On the contrary, there should be an open platform in which any information provider may participate (similar to the www). The assessment of information should be finally done by the user, but there may be auxiliary decision advice (similar to the Google technology).

In a first stage, the TIS is static and accessible by a web browser. This stage has been implemented already and may be tested here (in German only, sorry)

In a second stage, the TIS is dynamic and accessible by a mobile device which should consider the actual location of the user. In this stage, dynamic changes from the original schedule should be easily taken into account.

Inspired from the experiences of the TIS project, there are other activities conducted mainly in graduation theses that worked with pure logistics applications where specialisations of the traveling salesman problem are an important issue.

• Web Services for a tourist information system: In this project, we tested how several heterogenous software platforms may be coupled by web service interfaces. Our example which provided a prototypical TIS also worked with interfaces provided by the internet such as web services of the Hamburg transportation system.
• Hamburger Touristen Information: A first prototype providing the full basic functionality with content providers from the web that are statically connected. This prototype was implemented in a master software project. It may be tested here. User interface and content are in German only (sorry!)

Christopher Blöcker: Concept and Implementation for Dynamic Optimisation of Supply Tours Using an Ant System,
  bachelor thesis, commissioning enterprise: implico GmbH (Hamburg), SS 2011
  WHB award for the best bachelor thesis in computer science in SS 2011

Gabriel Jacobsohn: Location Based Time Management - Organising Dates Depending on Location and Time,
  bachelor thesis, commissioning enterprise: AKRA GmbH (Hamburg), SS 2011

Timo Jürgens: Concept and Implementation of a Predisposition Tool for the Phone Sale in the Oil and Gas Industry,
  bachelor thesis, commissioning enterprise: implico GmbH (Hamburg), SS 2011

Nicolas Woldt: Concept and Implementation of a Solution for the Tour Optimzation Problem in Oil and Gas Applications,
   bachelor thesis, commissioning enterprise: implico GmbH (Hamburg), SS 2010

Maximilian Herold: State-of-the-Art Semantic Web Services - Evaluation and Advancement in Context of a Tourist Information System (in English),
   master thesis, WS 2008/2009 (download, 2,9 MB)

Patrik Dusek: Development of a Software Architecture for a Transparent Communication in Distributed User Environments with Automatic Service Integration and a Focus on the Integration of Mobile Devices (PDA, Mobile Phone) (in German)
   diploma thesis, commissioning enterprise: Communications Profiler Ltd. (Berlin), WS 2006/2007  

Ole Hildebrandt: Development of a Software Architecture for the Portal System of hamburg.de (in German)
    diploma thesis, commissioning enterprise: EDS Business Solutions (Hamburg), SS 2004
    MLP award for a special study performance in SS 2004