DAVARSDistrict Agricultural Volatility and Adaptive Risk System

Agricultural risk across Northern Uganda

DAVARS computes a monthly agricultural risk score from 0 to 100 for Gulu, Arua, Lira, Oyam and Nebbi. The score blends price volatility, climate stress, production instability, conflict and disaster shocks, and input cost pressure into one composite index. When it crosses a district specific threshold, that month is flagged high risk: a period when deploying growth capital into youth agribusinesses is statistically more likely to produce income losses.

Index components

Data limitations. Oyam and Nebbi have no commodity price data, so their scores are computed from four components and flagged missing_price_component throughout. YII, ICPI and the conflict part of SII are national signals applied uniformly across districts. DAVARS is a prototype volatility index. It does not measure household welfare, predict specific prices, or replace field level enterprise assessment.

District Risk

DARS score over time

Recent data (last 24 months)

Risk Breakdown

Weighted contribution of each sub index to the composite score over time, calculated as component score times weight times 100. The five bands stack toward the DARS score.

Component summary for the latest month

Weight sensitivity

How stable the score is under alternative weightings. Correlations near 1.0 mean the ranking of high risk months barely moves when the weights change, so the signal is robust.

Validation

Historical shock alignment

Does the score rise during known crisis periods? Each pair compares the mean score during a documented shock against the mean outside it.

Backtest results

A signal lift above 1.2 (highlighted) means the score was at least 20% higher on average during the documented shock than during non shock months. Districts missing the price component are not directly comparable to full coverage districts.

Lead and lag diagnostic

Does the risk signal move ahead of price volatility? A significant positive correlation at T plus 2 or T plus 3 months indicates the composite signal tends to move 2 to 3 months ahead of price instability. This is a diagnostic check of co movement, not a causal forecast.

Current month risk bulletin

Generated from the DAVARS pipeline. Scores flagged missing_price_component (Oyam, Nebbi) are computed from four of the five components and should be read with that limit in mind.

DAVARS is a prototype agricultural volatility index for Northern Uganda. Hosted on Cloudflare Pages.