The term seems to be self defining. When it is applied? is the more pertinent question.
While we do not use the term HED here, its use would apply to water Quantity control rather Quality control (someone pointed out that water quality would suffer...but it could be achieved elsewhere in the overall stormwater management).
Here, we have regulations for quantity contol. An HED type strategy would apply only if one showed that normal quantity control would aggrevate downstream flooding. This would usuallly happen near the bottom of a watershed, where detaining the site discharge peak can make the peak overlap the peak coming from the upper watershed. In this situation it can be advantageous to push the site peak out early so that the peaks aren't additive.
Like Peter, I did a google search of the term and noticed it is used in manuals in AU. The manuals seemed be concerned with outlet control structures (primary discharge orifices in particular) being submerged by tailwater.