Article ID: | iaor2001408 |
Country: | Netherlands |
Volume: | 120 |
Issue: | 3 |
Start Page Number: | 583 |
End Page Number: | 592 |
Publication Date: | Feb 2000 |
Journal: | European Journal of Operational Research |
Authors: | Dror M., Haouari M., Chaouachi J. |
Keywords: | agriculture & food, programming: travelling salesman |
In this paper, we propose a definition for the Generalized Minimal Spanning Tree (GMST) of a graph. The GMST requires spanning at least one node out of every set of disjoint nodes (node partition) in a graph. The analysis of the GMST problem is motivated by real life agricultural settings related to construction of irrigation networks in desert environments. We prove that the GMST problem is NP-hard, and examine a number of heuristic solutions for this problem. Computational experiments comparing these heuristics are presented.