The organizers of SBE 16 Brazil & Portugal were challenged to promote discussions and
the development of solutions for an important and, at the same time, very ambitious topic
– Sustainable Urban Communities towards a Nearly Zero Impact Built Environment. This
is the main focus of the international conference SBE16 Brazil & Portugal; the only event
of the SBE16/17 conference series being held in Latin America, more precisely, in Vitória
(Espírito Santo), Brazil, from the 7th until the 9th of September 2016. The conference
offered a unique opportunity to bring together researchers from all over the world to
share evidence-based knowledge in the field and succeeded to achieve its goals since many
contributions from various parts of the planet were received, addressing a tiny part of the
problem or trying to perform the difficult task of making the sum of the parts a coherent
whole.