<p>Tailings are waste materials and slurry generated during the mining process, stored in tailings storage facilities (TSFs). Pollution in tailings severely threatens the environment downstream, and the potential energy accumulated therein also poses a serious security threat to downstream areas, even leading to fatalities. The tailings dam incidents database provides important support for analyzing the causes, which is important for avoiding incidents and predicting the impact of incidents. Due to inadequate tailings safety measures in developing countries, their dam types and causes differ from those in developed countries. The existing database composed of incidents in developed countries is not applicable to developing countries. Therefore, based on existing databases, we supplemented a large amount of Chinese data and established a global tailings dam incidents database covering 505 incidents from 1915 to 2022, including factors such as the time, location, cause, and impact of the incidents. Then we analyzed the spatial and temporal distribution of incidents and the relationship between the causes and other factors. Incident patterns between China (a typical developing countries) and USA (a typical developed countries) are compared. The analysis reveals that incident occurrences in China correlate with multiple economic indicators, whereas in USA, they primarily associate with mineral rents. Furthermore, the findings suggest significant room for improvement in the specificity and comprehensiveness of China's incident-related regulations.</p>