Life rafts are provided as a life-saving appliance on every seagoing merchant or passenger ship, in addition to the lifeboats.

An inflatable liferaft constitutes safety equipment designed to shelter shipwreck victims forced to abandon a vessel at sea.

Life rafts are much easier to launch as compared to lifeboats and in case of emergency situations, evacuation from the ship can be done without manually launching any of them as the life rafts are designed with an auto-inflatable system.