More attention has been paid to the cost of intensive but sporadic floods than the cost of extensive but frequent events.To examine the impacts of intensive ver-sus extensive events,we investigated the loss structure of global flood-induced mortality by using the cumulative loss ratio,marginal benefit chart,and cumulative loss plot.Drawing on the flood-induced mortality data for four decades (1976-2016) from the international disaster data-base EM-DAT,we defined the levels of flood loss according to the frequency of flood-induced deaths,and calculated the cumulative mortality and the marginal ben-efits of flood loss prevention practices at different levels.Our analysis showed that for the world\'s leading 30 countries with large flood-induced mortality and different levels of development:(1) 70％ of them have the cumu-lative deaths from extensive floods exceeding half of those caused by intensive floods in the study\'s four data decades;and (2) 80％ of them tend to gain less marginal benefit with increasing levels of flood prevention,with their marginal benefits peaking at loss prevention levels of 2-year or 5-year flood-induced mortality.These results indicate that,in the long run,the cumulative deaths of extensive floods are comparable to that of intensive events,and prevention of loss from extensive events can be an efficient way to reduce the total loss.For flood risk management under conditions of climate change,extensive loss events deserve more consideration.