APPLICATION OF NETWORK OPTIMIZATION MODELS TO THE ZOO OF GAZIANTEP

Most of the real life systems such as electric power, water delivery, and transportation systems can be defined as physical networks. In each of these structures, the flow from one point to another, typically as efficiently as possible - that is, along a shortest route or via some minimum cost flow pattern is tried to be optimized. In a similar manner, green parks or zoos can be considered as a network system because there are a lot of visiting nodes in these places. For instance, the zoo management can face a problem which is related the minimum route from zoo entrance and exit while visiting all the points. For aforementioned and similar network problems, popular network optimization models namely, the shortest path (SP) and minimum spanning tree (MST) problems are applied to the zoo of Gaziantep, Turkey. The network of zoo consists of 39 nodes including entrance, exit, and animal cages. With applied models, the minimum route for the visitors who have a limited time and the line which interconnects every pair of are determined