A district heating system (DHS) consists of energy suppliers and consumers, heat generation and storage facilities and power transmission lines in the region. DHS has taken charge of an increasingly important role as the energy cost increases recently. In this work, a model for operational optimization of the DHS in the metropolitan area is presented by incorporating forecast for demand from customers. In the model, production and demand of heat in the region of Suseo near Seoul, Korea, are taken into account as well as forecast for demand using the artificial neural network. The optimization problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem where the objective is to minimize the overall operating cost of DHS. The solution gives the optimal amount of network transmission and supply cost. The optimization system coupled with forecast capability can be effectively used as design and longterm operation guidelines for regional energy policies.