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The research detailed in this study focuses on the determination of an appropriate objective function to aid parameter estimation when simulating areas influenced by tidally varying flows. Three objective functions that are measures of how well the model results match field data at several locations and times were tested. A set of test cases is developed to represent tidally influenced systems and allow for the testing of the objective functions. These objective functions were tested by computing their values and comparing them for the various estimated parameters. Based on results of the first method of testing a further analysis was performed using PEST, an automatic parameter estimation tool. A weighted least squares of the velocity and water surface values with a weight function on the velocity term based on the shallow water equations is found to be a reasonable objective function at this point in the research.