In the last years, an increasing attention has been devoted to ships Underwater Radiated Noise (URN), with the progressive introduction of Guidelines by international organizations such as IMO, Classification Societies voluntary notations, limits and incentives in specific areas. In this context, a large effort has been spent in the study of cavitating propeller noise since it represents the dominating noise source on ships. UNIGE is currently involved in the EU-funded LIFE-PIAQUO project, in which the main activities are related to propeller design by optimization, onboard cavitation detection during operations, noise mapping. The present paper reports motivations, aims and achievements of these activities in the first half of the project.