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Container terminals in sea ports are an important interface among world-wide and inter-modal transport chains. They connect sea-side transport via vessels and land-side transport via rail and road transportation [3]. Dispatchers of container terminals face a variety of planning problems [15, 2]. These operational problems often are of a combinatorial nature and characterized by uncertainty. A popular way to address these difficulties has been the use of forecasting software based on simulation [1]. Based on simulation studies, terminal operations are improved, which not only includes the actual container movements but also further decisions which build up on these like, for example, the number of staff and the terminal equipment to employ in the future. One of the core problems in a container terminal is to decide where to store incoming containers. This decision includes the choice of a container block as well as the position of a container within the block. Inferior decisions may lead to unnecessary crane movements like the reshuffling of containers. They may also lead to congestion of yard trucks, high waiting times of cranes for trucks or vice versa. Ultimately, the turnaround time of the vessels increases due to inferior decisions which indicates poor terminal performance. In contrast, smooth terminal operations based on smart container storage decisions can contribute to improve the overall performance of a container terminal. On the one hand, storage decisions are required quickly and are highly interdependent with other decisions in a container terminal. Therefore, simulation systems often do not use sophisticated optimization models known in …