Operational Research (O.R.) case studies

What’s the problem?

You are the driver of a snowplough… There has been a heavy snowfall overnight You want to clear the roads in the town centre as quickly as possible And then return to your base

Which route should you take?

What do we need? A map!

Something like this… C E D H FG A B

With the distances

Let’s summarise the problem We want to find a route that goes down every road and returns to the starting point that is as short as possible

This is an example of a Route Inspection Problem

The Route Inspection Problem To find a minimum weight route that travels along each edge of a network at least once and returns to the starting vertex

Another example where this is used By a traffic warden who wants to inspect all the roads in an area

Over the next few lessons, we will look at ways of approaching problems of this type… What next?