An industrial control system (ICS) frontend system has a visualization component that concurrently visualizes a functional ICS view (FICSV) and further functional view (FFV). The FICSV represents ICS data associated with the ICS. The FFV is either a further FICSV representing ICS data or is a functional GIS view representing GIS data associated with a geographic information system. The functional views can respond to an associating event. The system further has a data input component configured to receive user input data, the input data indicating a directed associating operation (DAO) between the FICSV and FFV. A system processor component launches the associating event in response to received input data if the DAO is allowed. If the DAO is from an FFV object to the FICSV, the FICSV function is performed using FFV object properties; if from an FICSV ICS object to the FFV, the FFV function uses ICS object properties.