The Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, is an invasive vector of dengue, chikungunya and Zika viruses whose European range is expanding through human-mediated dispersal and increasingly favourable climatic conditions. In Austria, the species was first detected in 2012 and has since been reported from all federal states, with established populations in several urban centres such as Vienna and Graz. Because colonisation remains incomplete and occurrence records are spatially biased, current observations may not represent the full range of environments in which the species could establish. We therefore developed a transparent, ecologically and climatologically informed habitat suitability model for data-limited early-colonisation conditions. The national-scale model integrates three hierarchically weighted domains: summer climatic suitability, overwintering potential and environmental habitat suitability. Historical climate conditions were represented using SPARTACUS data for 1991–2020. Future projections comprised 2036–2065 under representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5 and 2071–2100 under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, using 16 ensemble members from Austria’s regional climate scenarios (ÖKS15). Environmental indicators were derived from Copernicus land-cover products. Habitat suitability classes were derived from ranked index values at verified citizen-science presence locations and applied consistently across scenarios.

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